Have you ever wondered why Polly Toynbee gets on the BBC Radio so often?
She went to Holland Park School – the flagship London comprehensive known in the Sixties as the "Socialist Eton", and one much treasured as a place where Labour politicians and right-thinking intellectuals could give their children a private-school-like education without the embarrassment of paying fees. Polly Toynbee, The Guardian columnist, hailing from a similar background, was a classmate.
That\’s about Jenny Abramsky, the retiring head of BBC Radio.
Hmmm…
I met a chap once who sent his children there at that time. It did very well, he told me, because so many of the parents hired tutors to give private coaching of an evening.
It can’t have hurt that she went, albeit briefly, to Oxford. Like everyone else at the BBC. Even if most of them weren’t sent down.
Although I think the main reason is probably that she is just such good copy – she is utterly and totally reliably bonkers in that Leftist way. You *know* what she is going to say, she is utterly impervious to the facts, and you are guaranteed she will come out with some fatuous opinion shared by 5% of the hard core social working community but virtually no one else outside Islington. So conflict with some other Talking Head is easy to arrange. She is like McDonald’s in a way – people eat there because they *know* what they are going to get wherever they are in the world (and I assume some of them think it is worth the money – not an issue at the BBC).
“give their children a private-school-like education”. Holland Park??? You must be joking.
Why do you say that? What do you know about Holland Park Comp that I don’t?
Tim adds: That’s a quote from the Telegraph. You’ll need to ask them….