Bernard Ingham - another local soapbox
Sunday, September 8, 2002

From one of our contributors

On Wednesday on BBC Radio Leeds, Alex Hall interviewed Morland Sanders and Paul Greenan, the presenter and producer of the new BBC1 regional documentary programme Inside Out. During the interview, Alex said that Bernard Ingham is to be a guest presenter of one of the programmes in the series. On Thursday, BBC Radio Leeds broadcast a trailer for Inside Out in which Bernard Ingham says

It's always nice to come back to the town you were brought up in. But I never thought I'd come back to the lesbian capital of Britain. Ye Gods!

Click here to hear this trailer

Our contributor adds

I searched for articles about Bernard Ingham on your site and found an open letter from John Morrison to Sheila Tordoff of the Hebden Bridge Times in which John described Bernard as "a man who left the town so very many years ago, and who now shows his face only when there's a film crew in tow" and who "snipes at the town from his bunker in Purley" and castigated Sheila for "giving Sir Bernard a soapbox", "denying local people a voice" and "abusing your position of having a virtual monopoly on local news and views".

On the BBC website is a statement by Colin Philpott, Head of BBC North, which includes the claim that "we pride ourselves on being fair, being impartial, being first with the news and being fun".

Previously on the Hebweb

29th July 2001: Observer Features Hebden Bridge

The Observer published an article about Hebden Bridge being "the Sapphic capital of Britain" on July 29th 2001, more than a year before Bernard Ingham's report for BBC North's Inside Out. The introduction to the article stated that "no one's complaining" and the article quoted various local residents who either had no objection to the presence of or made favourable remarks aboutİlesbians in Hebden Bridge.

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