Blog Written by Donal Diary
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This woman looks like a hit man, and tells me she's out for revenge. Janet Street-Porter is plotting retribution on all those who slagged her off for I'm a Celebrity. Gangsters make better company than television executives. For one thing, they're usually better-read (all that time in prison) and certainly funnier - you always laugh harder at a gangster's jokes, I find. But who genuinely scares you more? I've been through quite a few hit men and TV executives, and it's a close call. This week, I entertained Paul Ferris, a man who stabbed, shot, robbed and scalped for a living - he had a reputation as a hit man and looks uncannily like a television executive. I pondered what it must be like to witness the life-force draining from victims in the last moments of life. Ferris, a major Glasgow gangland figure, is known as "The Accountant". Like many TV executives, he has never been convicted of murder, but has assassin's eyes. On the way to meet him, I encounter another assassin - outside Glasgow airport. I had seen her but she hadn't seen me. A mutual friend, though, beckons me over. This woman looks like a hit man and she's on a mission. Tall, slim, striking and unmistakably scary, she tells me she is out for revenge. I know her. She gave me my first job in television - but when I remind her, I detect that she is uncomfortable about being a conspirator in that cultural crime. Today, Janet Street-Porter is plotting retribution on all those who criticised her extraordinary performance on I'm a Celebrity . . . Channel 4 has given her an hour's television, and she tells me that Amanda Platell is on her hit list: "She fucking slagged me off and now she's getting it." There will be hell to pay. I remember Janet when she ran Youth and Entertainment Features at BBC Manchester - or Yoof TV, as it was known. She was formidable and brilliant. The life-force certainly left me when I first saw her in an edit suite and she shouted at me, "What the fucking hell do you have on your nails?" That was the last time I used Stop 'n Grow. But Janet could drive anyone to nail-biting. It dawned on me that I, too, had ranted against Janet on Matthew Bannister's show. The skies darkened. She noticed the change in my visage, but then I recalled that I had in fact made a diatribe on TalkSport against Germaine Greer when she was on Celebrity Big Brother. My bulletproof vest remained in the holdall. As I discussed a new film project involving Robbie Carlyle and Oasis's Liam Gallagher, Paul Ferris looked so much more the TV executive than JSP. He assured me that his book The Ferris Conspiracy is to be a major feature film, and suddenly John Travolta's Chili Palmer in Get Shorty sprang to mind. Ferris will be at the Edinburgh TV festival discussing gangsters and documentaries, but that's not the real shoot-out in Edinburgh. There's a dance-off - in the style of Strictly Come Dancing - involving numerous TV executives, including Lorraine Heggessey, the former controller of BBC1. She has shot me down in the past. "The problem with you, Donal, is that you are high-maintenance." I hit back: "But I'm low-maintenance if you look after me." "Donal," she said, "that's what all high-maintenance people say." Trigger-happy colleagues are the subject matter of the book that I'm supposed to review with Sheila Hancock for Richard and Judy. Written by David Wolstencroft, the creator of TV's Spooks, it is a spy thriller entitled Good News Bad News. And it's full of hit men. Richard and Judy's researcher chases me for my views. The good news, I tell him, is that I've got the book. The bad news is I haven't read it yet. Sheila is top of the class and has done her homework. My first encounter with Richard and Judy followed an investigation I did into the Nottingham underworld nine years ago for World In Action. For exposing the drugs trade, I received the first of my many death threats, and so scared were the Gods of Daytime for their own safety that they announced the item only when I was in the studio. The price on my head was twice my Granada salary - such a paltry sum that I nearly cashed myself in. What price on my head if Judy finds out I've not read the book? Or if Germaine Greer listens to TalkSport?
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