In the cathedral - for Any Questions?

My wife Jan and I were delighted to have an evening off on Friday night when we were invited to the BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions?.

The topical discussion in which a panel of personalities from the worlds of politics, media and elsewhere are posed questions by the audience came last week from Lichfield Cathedral.

It was fascinating to see what is involved in producing a live radio show.

We had to be in our seats by 7.15pm for the show which goes out live at 8.02pm.

The cathedral looked dramatic outside against the night sky and very atmospheric inside with its subdued lighting and a packed audience of almost 1,000 people.

Producer Victoria Wakely explained that the Any Questions? show is one of the longest running radio programmes.

It started as a six-week pilot and is still going strong 74 years later.

Tony Benn holds the record for most guest appearances having been on the show more than 80 times.

Every member of the audience is invited to submit questions as they arrive and the authors of the nine questions picked by the producer are then invited to take their seats in the front two rows.

The panellists are kept well away from the audience and have no idea of the questions until they are asked live on air by chairman Jonathan Dimbleby.

The panellists last Friday were David Blunkett, the former Labour Cabinet Minister; Daniel Finkelstein, Executive Editor of The Times; Anna Soubry, a Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Department of Health and Sunder Katwala, Director of the Think Tank, British Future.

Topics ranged from the Olympics opening ceremony to the cap on Benefits and bankers’ bonuses.

The only heated debate was the HS2, the proposed new London to Birmingham fast rail link, which drew the only slight heckling of the night.

On the whole the evening was a credit to Radio 4 with a high level of debate conducted very politely in the atmospheric setting of a beautiful cathedral - and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Thank you to the Rev. David Primrose, the Lichfield Diocesan Director of Transforming Communities, who gave us the tickets.