Media Quotes of the Week: From ITV reporter asks Boris Johnson if everything is okay to Royal Family blasts BBC over Princes and the Press documentary

ITV reporter to the Prime Minister: “In your speech to the CBI, you lost your notes, you lost your place, you went off on a tangent about Peppa Pig. Frankly, is everything okay?"

Andrew Darling in a letter to The Times [£]: "Sir, Hugo Rifkind (Comment, Nov 16) is right to suggest that the reason the prime minister turned up at the Cenotaph looking neat and respectable is that he did not have time to scruff himself up beforehand. When I was news editor at Channel Four News in the 1990s one of my tasks was to escort guests from reception via make-up to the studio. I recall the evening when I collected Boris Johnson and took him to make-up, where his face was duly powdered and his hair neatly brushed. Virtually his first action on then setting off to be interviewed by Jon Snow was to run both hands vigorously through his hair until he once again, as Rifkind rightly describes it, resembled someone whose second job is 'being tied to a pole in a field with a turnip for a head'.”

Stewart Purvis on Twitter: "Nadine Dorries tells @CommonsDCMS Channel 4’s future should be ‘brought into question,particularly when it is in receipt of taxpayers’ money. It is our responsibility to evaluate whether taxpayers are receiving value for money’. Channel 4 receives no taxpayers’ money."

Paul Dacre, in a letter to The Times [£], reveals he will not be reapplying to be the new chair of Ofcom: "To anyone from the private sector, who, God forbid, has convictions, and is thinking of applying for a public appointment, I say the following: the civil service will control (and leak) everything; the process could take a year in which your life will be put on hold; and if you are possessed of an independent mind and are unassociated with the liberal-left, you will have more chance of winning the lottery than getting the job. Me? After my infelicitous dalliance with the Blob, I’m taking up an exciting new job in the private sector that, in a climate that is increasingly hostile to business, struggles to create the wealth to pay for all those senior civil servants working from home so they can spend more time exercising on their Peloton bikes and polishing their political correctness, safe in the knowledge that it is they, not elected politicians, who really run this country."

George Osborne on Twitter: "I admired Dacre’s forceful editorship of the Mail even if I was often on the wrong end of it. Can’t quite understand why he - like others of his ilk - wielded such power, got the government, the PM and the Brexit he wanted, and still thinks the system is stacked against him."

Press Gazette reports: "Former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre is returning to his advisory editor-in-chief position at Mail publisher DMG Media, just three weeks after leaving the same role."

Rory Cellan-Jones on Twitter: "Blimey. As the Chinese saying goes if you sit by the river long enough you’ll see the body of Geordie Greig go floating by. Makes Succession look like The Vicar of Dibley."

Andrew Marr on Twitter: "Personal announcement. After 21 years, I have decided to move on from the BBC.l leave behind many happy memories and wonderful colleagues. But from the New Year I am moving to Global to write and present political and cultural shows, and to write for newspapers...I think British politics and public life are going to go through an even more turbulent decade, and as I’ve said, I am keen to get my own voice back."

Bill Browder on Twitter: "The 2021 winner of the Magnitsky Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalist is Catherine Belton. She has exposed the crimes of the Putin regime in ways that nobody has ever done before. She’s now paid a very dear price in their retaliation with multiple abusive libel suits."

Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace and Clarence House in a joint-statement on BBC2 documentary The Princes and the Press, as reported by the Mail: "A free, responsible and open Press is of vital importance to a healthy democracy. However, too often overblown and unfounded claims from unnamed sources are presented as facts and it is disappointing when anyone, including the BBC, gives them credibility."

• David Aaronovitch on Twitter: "Just watched the first part of BBC2’s Royals and the press series. I am struck by how much time, money and intelligent people’s effort is spent on earnest discussion of what is, when all is said and done, fatuous, gossipy nonsense."

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