The Independent, 1999

Reflections on my appearance on the Ali G Show. This is an extended version of a piece which appeared in the Independent.

Don't talk to me about chic. I have been on the Ali G show. It was quite fun being stitched up. The scene is familiar: presenter, three "experts". We latter were hugger-mugger, arse-down, knees-up on the kind of sofa you can't get out of. He sprawled, like any tall young man with attitude. He threw out questions about animal rights which were very funny. Like (I'm improvising a bit): 'Do you approve of testing drugs on animals? Isn't it a waste of good heroin?ä Or: 'Battery hens? Why do they wire up hens to batteries?ä One looks a prat, of course. That's the idea. But various people I think are cool have rung me up to say that this encounter means I am now very cool indeed. So everything's fine then.

Not quite. Ali G is part of a television fashion which is not half as productive or fun as people think. Let's slightly adapt A A Gill's remarks in The Sunday Times this Sunday and call this genre, Ambush TV. It depends on getting the drop on real people. Everyone's at it nowadays. Since his impeccably balanced conduct of a late night debate on genetic engineering the other night, IÊ have decided that Jon Snow is not, after all, the most pro-actively green newscaster we have. Still, I fear he remains the most Will Huttonish presenter on-air. And now it seems even kindly Jon Snow has fallen for a version ofÊ Ambush TV. He has been telling newspapers recently that he wants to get beyond being marooned in a studio with guests who know how to play that game. He'd rather be out and about, popping the awkward question.

Thus, the other day, he jumped Jon Moulton, the boss of Alchemy Partners, the company bidding for Rover. Anyway, the ensuing encounter may have surprised Mr Snow. It was a textbook case of a man of business bluntly and (in the contemporary climate) bravely stating some economic home truths to questions which dripped North London's disdain for trade. The piece was so telling, Radio 4 pre-emptively hijacked it for their 5 o'clock news. Mr Moulton repeated his lark, outgunning Today's organic curmudgeon, John Harrumphrys. All this usefully reminds us that in live broadcast, there is at least a sporting chance for the determined victim.
The Mark Thomas Product is the embodiment of Ambush TV where the odds are stacked all the other way. Like the Ali G show, it is a crossover between comedy and reality. Mark Thomas is a comedian who seems to have decided that anyone to do with capitalism is fair game. They can be challenged on anything, anytime. The snippets are then packaged and fed to a tame audience in a night club setting. Luckily, the result is very unfunny so people will turn off eventually.

Indeed, I hazard a guess that the media is going to turn against no-brainer liberalism, ingrained anti-capitalism, and credulous greenery. I suspect that the young will insist on a reality check. In the meantime, the basic advice is that anyone running anything (a business, a country, anything to do with animals) should not to appear in a recorded show of any kind. Unless you like a lot of the previous work by the journalist involved, and preferably unless you know they need you more than you need them, stay away from recorded items on Channel 4 News, Newsnight, and World In Action, Dispatches. There are glowing exceptions, but the arts graduate triumphalism in "investigative" and campaigning films is institutionalised and remorseless. TV producers get away with it because the worlds of government, business and science have become inured to the bias against them.

Campaigners are a different kettle of fish. They are very sensitive. I recently appeared in a film by a man whose work knocking 'greenä fundamentalism I had long admired. Martin Durkin was ticked off by the Independent Television Commission in 1997 for 'ambushingä innocent greens for his series, 'Against Natureä. Sensible people cried that his treatment of them was a decent reversal of fortunes. Anyway, when Mr Durkin made 'The Rise and Fall of GMä, which was shown last month, he told all of us who were invited to appear that this was to be a critical examination of the anti-GM case. It was truly, fabulously, funny to hear the amiable Lady Conran (of Women say No to GMO) and her lunch guests opining on the realities of peasant life from her Holland Park home. Juxtaposed with dead babies in Africa, this was high and serious comedy. George Monbiot had moaned in The Guardian in advance of seeing the film that it would be awful. Dr Mae-Wan Ho of the Open University (who featured strongly in the film and was treated rather more gently than Lady Conran) publicly disassociated herself from it. But stung as these people may have been, this was not Ambush TV. No-one was tricked; everyone was given plenty of time to speak their mind.

In the case of the Ali G Show, I was conned royally. Everyone knows by now that Ali G is not whatever he pretends to be. It was not like that sometime last spring when I was asked by some yoof production team to appear in an educational show with a man who was clearly and repeatedly advertised to me as being a DJ from Shepherd's Bush who hadn't had much formal education and who might ask some surprising questions on our chosen subject.

You will say that one might have guessed that Ali never did look the conventional Rasta. Still, I have been schooled by liberalism not to judge racial books by their covers. I didn't know that Ali G was really Sacha Baron Cohen, a sort of latter day Ben Elton. I thought the Lion of Judah pendant sort of figured. My mind did a little spin about the crossover between Islam and Afro-Caribbean thinking. Might that explain this somehow Asian-seeming fellow?

After about ten minutes of the filming I suspected no-one could be this stupid or ignorant. But what if I had challenged him? 'Oh, this darkie is, - he might have said, and been for real. Indeed, when I watch Ali, I wonder just who this joke is supposed to be about? And I certainly feel for Lady Chelsea, for whom Mr Baron Cohen adopted a new disguise which reclaimed the Ambush Factor in his comedy. Lady Chelsea, a semi-professional adviser on etiquette, told the Mail on Sunday that she feels a bit aggrieved, and wished she's had more street smarts. She shouldn't worry. She came out of it as a nice, sensible, West End sort of a woman. She didn't sneer at this imposter half as much as he, and perhaps the sillier bits of his audience, sneered at her.

As I say, I quite enjoyed myself on the Ali show. I am a sucker for the greasepaint anyway. I am what passes for a professional in this game. And I was delighted to hear that one of my fellow guests has come round to it all as well. 'I hated it at the timeä, says Elizabeth Dyas, who runs a hedgehog hospital. "I thought it was so stupid. But any publicity is welcome, and I've named a hedgehog after Ali G'. Besides she adds: 'My daughter says, it's really cool to have been on'. Agreed. But we won't get far if the media, and worse, its audience, believe that every poor sap is fair game for media mugging.

The author is the Media Fellow of The Institute of Economic Affairs