Thank you to everyone who posted or emailed me nominations for the Top 20 Most Fanciable Political Journalists. I then showed the list to a random sample of, er, three people, and this is the list which emerged from their very serious (sic) deliberations. I shall now get my coat...
1. Cathy Newman (Channel 4 News)
2. James Landale (BBC News 24)
3. Gloria Del Piero (GMTV)
4. Gaby Hinsliff (The Observer)
5. Jenny Scott
6. Andrew Porter (Daily Telegraph)
7. Fraser Nelson (The Spectator)
8. Julia Hartley-Brewer (Sunday Express)
9. Daisy McAndrew (ITV News)
10. Niall Paterson (Sky News)
11. Nick Watt (The Guardian)
12. Melissa Kite (Sunday Telegraph)
13. Laura Kuenssberg (BBC News)
14. Tom Bradby (ITV News)
15. Martha Kearney (World at One)
16. Reeta Chakrabarti (BBC News)
17. James Lyons (Daily Mirror)
18. Giles Dilnot (Daily Politics)
19. Rachel Sylvester (Daily Telegraph)
20. Kevin Maguire (Daily Mirror)
If anyone has pictures of Rachel Sylvester, Andrew Porter or Gloria del Piero, so email them to me and I will add them in!
Outrageous. How can you place Jenny Scott (a humble milkmaid) above Laura Kuenssberg ( a princess)?
ReplyDeleteThis blog has degenerated. Dale. You have been nobbled and are probably taking brown envelopes to fix the result.
I shall never believe anything you say again.
ps I nearly voted for Simon Heffer and then remembered I wasn't gay.
Oh Dale Dale Dale…..I despair.
ReplyDeleteIts fair to say that this blogg is a right leaning site, that favours the Tory Party and Dave “ Nip down the offy and get me 20 Marly Lights” Dave… I think that is a fair assessment.
Last 5 Threads.
1. Top 20 Most Fanciable Political Journalists
2. MPs to Undergo SAS Training for Reality TV Show
3. I am a Ninja, Apparently
4. Nominate Your Most Fanciable Political Journalists
5. Did Sky News Reporter Go 'Commando' in Downing Street
I know the Tories have no ideas or policies, but there is no need to make it so obvious Dale. Seems that Dave is losing his momentum; nothing to say, nothing to say, nothing to say. Proof that the Tories have been living off Labours recent difficulties, not Daves brilliance.
PS All Journalists are pigs, no matter what they look like.
And there was me thinking that Gaby Hinsliff was the same gender as Gaby Rado !! Who says you don't learn any thing reading 'Iain Dale' !!
ReplyDeleteWhat a splendid lot of women. I think at least three of them are more attractive than any actress you care to name, let alone fashion models.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do have a taste for weather girls.
Speak for yourself, weasel, I think Jenny Scott should have been placed higher!
ReplyDeleteWhere is GPW?
ReplyDeleteGosh, you mean no one nominated the lovely and debonair Matt Frei, with his sulky, petty little face screwed up tight with disapproval of all things American?
ReplyDeleteCan I send in a late nomination for Charles Moore, please?
I confess to being quite partial to Louise Bagshawe. Though she'd probably scorn me.
ReplyDeleteJulia Hartley-Brewery - excellent!
ReplyDeleteIs she a political journalist - or a property development TV presenter?
The rest - forget it.
I'm assuming James Lyons was one of your consultees, and that he voted for himself.
ReplyDeleteLooks like political journalists offer as poor a range of hotties as the parliamentarians - and you are being very generous to Julia H-B!!!
ReplyDelete99 shepherd "However, I do have a taste for weather girls."
ReplyDeleteLike the famous one who turned to the west and "obliterated Wales" ?!
tjWeasel.. you're mad. Jenny Scott is an absolute babe and clearly the best of the list. Happy to say I've had the pleasure of meeting her, if unfortunately not the pleasure of, er, the pleasure...
ReplyDelete(Though where is Stephanie Flanders?)
YYYAAAAWWWNNNN
ReplyDeleteHave your site providers forgotten how to “FRAME” internet sites.
I like your scroll list of feckers who all deserve to be in Iraq, but surely they should be frameset 2X2 or 3X3. I think you should sack them.
Oh dear you cant can you, because it Guido’s Mod !!!!!!!
we really need to get good looking people interested in politics.
ReplyDeleteVery good gender balanced list there, Iain. My wife's a little disappointed Andrew Marr didn't make the cut, but we live in a cruel world.
ReplyDeletea Kuenssberg gave money to Wendy Alexander
ReplyDeletecould he be related to the journalist
Can I please ask for a late entry in the Foreign News Category, for all our favourite 'omniracial news anchoress', Soledad O'Brien from CNN...?
ReplyDeleteAs Stephen Colbert so wonderfully put it - "my American Dream involves Uncle Sam, a hot tub full of apple pie filling, and Soledad O'Brien."
Yes, totally agree with jd. I'm a gay man, and even I fancy Stephanie Flanders... although, of course, jd, she is an economics journalist and not a political one.
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me, I must get some Winalot ... ;)
ReplyDeleteJenny Scott only #5? Either your list is wrong or my fetish list is wrong.
ReplyDeleteI think it's yours :)
Gaby Hinsliff is a pretty little beauty. With a First from Cambridge to boot. All fairies at her crib methinks...
ReplyDeleteIain you are going down market. This is becomming a tabloid blog.
ReplyDeleteYour time in the States has changed you . What did you get up to.?
About Andrew Marr ... apart from being married to some exreme leftie (don't know the name and please don't burden me by telling me) Andrew Marr wrote emetic drivel about 'Mr Snuffles' his muskrat or something.
ReplyDeleteThe pain was so excruciating I only read a couple of paragraphs.
This was a direct lift from NY Times newspaper man Don Marquis's outstanding 'Archibald And Mehitabel' series, written in the 1920s. Archibald lived in the editorial department of a famous NY newspaper and only came out after everyone had gone home. He wrote his pieces by jumping head first onto each key in those even pre-Selectric days of typewriters.
He chronicled the life of a stray cat, Mehitabel, who lived out her life in dark alleys, got food where she could on the city streets and fell in temporary love with various gentlemen cats. She got into the office Archie occupied, at night, and they talked.
Downgrade this by about 100%, and you get Andrew Marr's trite, dated, embarrassing "Mr Snuffles".
What a creep.
Yep, you're definitely going off the boil in blogging terms - boooring!
ReplyDeleteIs it because nothing is happening - it's half-term this week in some parts of the country (although ours is next week) - or is it because Brown & Co have successfully shut out the Conservatives (and the LibDems) from setting the pace? Or, are they both to lazy?
What about the story in the Telegraph today where a Labour peer said that immigration has not bought the benefits claimed? What about Mervyn King's dire predictions for the economy over the next year - in direct contradiction of Brown/Darling's waffle? What about Brown's apparent support for Blair as president of the EU?
Instead we get a "little list" of the people who make their livings by writing about politics. Incredible! This is tabloid stuff.
Where are you taking this blog, Iain? I think we should be told!
Yours sincerely
Disgusted
Tunbridge Wells
Whoever said "politics is show business for ugly people" clearly had this blog in mind.
ReplyDeleteMishal Hussain you clowns. Number 1 all day long. And she counts 'cos she presented a R4 piece on Pakistan (or Pokistan as she would have it) politics the other day.
ReplyDeleteDisgusted of Tunbridge Wells has a point.
ReplyDeleteHow was Gordon Brown's arm pinned against his back to vote for the destructive, insane Tony Blair to get the non-elected office of the de trop presidency of the EUSSR?
What was agreed between these two louche individuals, and why do both 'honour' their commitments?
Scared not to?
Scared to change their minds after 20 years, which in most contexts would be perfectly understandable. Circumstances change. But not here.
One man swivelled his snake hips into the door of No 10 Downing St and kept the other one, for reasons yet to be described, as insane, furtive, destructive, angry, frightened Chancellor of The Exchequer for 10 years. (Was he chained in the cellar during nocturnal hours?)
Why?
Their task, of course, was to destroy British society and our legal infrastructure, the peaceful civil society and the identity, of the indigenes of these islands.
This, they have done.
Tony Blair is a world class emetic, and Brown is his almost his equal.
Why are these two inadequate and strange individuals controlling Britain? And Peter Mandelson. And where is that fat pig, wossname - John Prescott? How did that ignorant lout prosper so long in a non-job without being sacked?
What was an ignorant council drudge like Margaret Beckett (whose octegenarian husband is on £80,000 a year as her "assistant") doing occupying the great office of Foreign Secretary of Great Britain? How many foreign languages does she speak? How much European, American and world history does she know?
And before her the shivver-inducing, sleazy Jack Straw? How on earth did these people get in?
Who are all these people swilling around our ankles?
The minute I first saw Tony Blair's face, I knew that great evil was going to wash into Britain, and possibly drown us.
Veered O/T. Sorry.
I'm appalled at your taste in women Iain.
ReplyDeleteThen I remembered you don't have any anyway.
If autocuties qualify then the fragrant Sophie Raworth should be right up there ..... and whatever happened to the Phil Silvers lookalike - not so much as a mention.
ReplyDeleteThat kevin McGuire I would love to give him one
ReplyDeleteverity, thanks for reminding us of archie and mehitabel, although you overlooked explaining that archie was a cockroach (and had to type in lower case only).
ReplyDeleteOh der,
ReplyDeletehas Daisy been eating too many bananas?
"and fell in temporary love with various gentlemen cats"
ReplyDelete...several of whom had scratch furrows in their noses by way of a keepsake.
Good that others are still reading A&M, in any event.
*shudders*
ReplyDeleteyes,you have gone a bit celeb-tastic Iain. Significant other has always had the hots for Martha Kearney (personally I think she is too short - I am 5ft 10). I wasn't moved enough to nominate but I have had my thoughtful moments about Jon Craig of Sky.
ReplyDeleteChrist, that lot are enough to make you want to go out and shag an MP.
ReplyDeleteIn the spirit of this blog
ReplyDeleteand a free dating agency
I fancy Fraser
Looking at those bags
he could do with a few nights in
Happy to help
if this helps
He has a strange accent
and strange views
But oddly addictive
Jenny Scott *every* day of the week...I wish!
ReplyDeleteIs this the best there is? Frankly Iain I wouldn't touch any of them with yours, let alone mine.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's what being a political journalist does to people, though. Hardly surprising in view of the unlimited levels of manure they have to deal with.
I think the photo of the person at number one tells you the standards we are dealing with here - no offence, but come on!
ReplyDeleteIf you think these freaks are good looking, you need to get out more!
ReplyDeleteAsquith I would be partial to a no of those lovely female presenters, but likewise I would feel scorned.
ReplyDeleteFound myself in a queue for coffee with Jo Coburn once at the Labour Party Conference in 2003. Had a brief, pleasant, but inconsequential chat, but it made my day :)
Ah the sad life of a political prole (sigh)
No mention of Matt Barbet?!? Sacriledge! I want him sent to me via parcelforce-naked!
ReplyDeleteIain, you need to set up a proper list (where is Toby Harden?) with photos and one of those proper online voting thingies or else we will all suspect that your committee of 3 consisted of you, yourself and your dog.
ReplyDeleteAren't we forgetting Sarah Montague ?
ReplyDeleteSurely a 'thinking man's crumpet' candidate ?
Agree with previous poster that you should split into male / female so that there can be a proper voting scandal..
Justin Webb has been overlooked ?
ReplyDeleteAnd what about Matt 'the Italian Stallion' Frei ?
Not impressed with BBC Wales' David Cornock not making the list. There's always next year.
ReplyDeletehttp://davidcornock.blogspot.com/
Anon 10.56
ReplyDeleteI have already contacted the electoral commission regarding this somewhat dubious poll, and have asked them to look with special care at the unjustifiably low position of Laura Kuenssberg and the number of Jenny Scott fans who have obviously been sending in multiple votes.
Banana republic. Whatever next.
http://kerroncross.blogspot.com/2008/02/silver-fox-is-just-six-y.html
ReplyDeleteFeel free to use either photo.
Why isn't Laura Trevelyan [crazy name, crazy girl!] on the list ?
ReplyDeleteWas David Blunkett one of the judges?
ReplyDeleteIain, you do realise if you do it properly that this poll will attract the interest of the offline press - "Iain Dale's Poll Votes XXXX as Spunkiest Political Journo" - you need to be careful who gets access to these results. We don't want to be attracting any more wierdos to this blog. Any I mean you "wrinkled weasel" - I can only assume Mrs Weasel has a face like an ikea flatpack sofa.
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time, political journalists reached the top of their profession because they were good at their job. One of them, famous for his Ulster brogue and herringbone overcoat used to drink at the same Courage house as me, on St Andrews Hill, EC4. Unpretentious is one of the words I would use to describe him.
ReplyDeleteThirty years on and look at the shower currently on display. I neither know nor care what admixture of ability and palm-grease got them where they are today but every last one of them has the look of people who my parents' generation would have described as "on the make". THEY are the story. I neither know nor care what fathomless childhood insecurity impels them to seek attention in the way that they do. Nor do I know for the life of me why I should pay for this pantomime.
"What’s the mood like in Basra, Rageh?" We don't care, love. Moods: are not news. Emotions: are not news. Fergal Keane's tender liberal conscience: is not news. Leering, pouting, flirting and hair-flicking: are not news.
What this bunch of louche, preening, narcissistic little toerags need is a spell working down the sewers, like everyone has to do in Switzerland. Where, come to think of it, politicians are kicked out rotationally and no glamorous caché attaches to politicians AT ALL, far less to their journalistic parasites.
There is no way that Martha should not be top and to have Julia Heartless Bastard placed above just shows how wrong, wrong, wrong this is. My day/week/year was made twice when Martha herself rang to see if she could interview my previous employer and I had the joy of answering the phone and chatting to her. She is a wonderful normal human person as well as being gorgeous with great taste in clothes. I still get the WATO newsletter just to have something from Martha in my in-box every week.
ReplyDeletehave you read Kathy Newman's response to her winning reported on Dizzie's blog. Hilarious.
ReplyDeleteWont deprive him of the hits by repeating it here.
Where's the original?
Dizzie wrote on his blog:
ReplyDelete================================
Should anyone have noticed, an entriely unscientific poll was carried out by Iain in order to find the top 20 most fanciable political journalists. The winner was Cathy Newman from Channel 4 who wasgracious in victory saying,
"Oh my god! There are way more glamorous people on the list like Daisy and Jenny. Was this a readership vote or Iain Dale himself? If the latter I am clearly a fag hag!"
Quote of the Day winner there too I think.
==================================
Hope I havent broken any rules of etiquitte. Dizzy makes all his money hacking into russian oligarchs' bank accounts anyway apparently so doesnt need the blog traffic.
jd / stuart - recommend Stephanie Flanders in the morning..
ReplyDeleteBBC make her Economics Editor in the afternoon..
Who says the BBC don't listen to the voice of the people ?
Iain, you do realise that this is rather putting the kibosh on the right wing dream of ending the TV licence ??
ReplyDeleteI can see the next Charter Renewal pitch coming now.. 'Give us another 10 years of the licence fee, and we'll making sure there is another decade of posh, intelligent totty on your screens..and we'll even try and push Kate Silverton off to Sky..'
I am an Iain Dale fag hag too!
ReplyDelete(apologies to Spartacus)
Anon @3.32pm:
ReplyDelete'..and we'll even try and push Kate Silverton off to Sky..'
Well they'd certainly get my vote should thet succeed.
No Jon Isaby or Nick Robinson?
ReplyDeleteSeriously mate, the jet-lag has really got to you, or so it seems.
ReplyDeleteThis compulsive list-lust is beyond dreary, and beyond parody.
Lay off the crystal-meth & get back on the pink oboe.
This Hi-NRG tone is dull, dull, dull.
He's not doing politics anymore but surely the adorable Guto Hari?? Can we have him reading the news instead of old man Huw?
ReplyDeleteCathy Newman... swoon.
ReplyDeleteI do protest that there has been no opportunity to vote for Stephanie Flanders!
ReplyDeletePeter from Putney
ReplyDeleteOne question on Sophie Raworth... why doesn't she get that huge lump/wart/whatever it is on the bridge of her nose sorted? Until that's done she can never make a list like this!
Where have all the pictures gawn..?
ReplyDeleteWhat about the amazing Hilary Douglas, Sunday Express. OK, she may be Education, but she almost counts as a politico. Only Jenny Booth comes near otherwise
ReplyDeleteI think the Beebs UN correspondent Laura Trevellyn beats out Cathy (who I also like a lot). Laura has been going through some sort of transformation since going to the US, looking more lovely by the day. A real boiler and her voice just gets me off.
ReplyDelete