Friendship with Sir David Attenborough seen as big plus for car-buff presenter
Napier, MSCNewsWire, Friday 15 July 2016 - Paul Henry’s mysterious mid-winter holiday is increasingly being ascribed to the television showman’s candidacy for the BBC’s most valuable property which is the motor series Top Gear.
Mr Henry (pictured above) is known to have been considered for the anchor role when it originally became vacant when defining presenter Jeremy Clarkson made his departure.
Since then the show has floundered, notably during the term as presenter of a well-known British disc jockey and is now often referred to as Top Flop.
The BBC has too much invested in the series to abandon it. Recent experiences have convinced the corporation that it is the character and performance of the main presenter that determines its success or otherwise.
A key asset for car-buff Mr Henry is his long ago association with the BBC’s Sir David Attenborough. In addition to his role as natural history presenter Sir David (pictured below) who is now 90 has occupied most of the BBC’s senior administrative roles including director of programming and controller.
Mr Henry whose family comes from Britain’s West Country worked early in his career at the BBC with Sir David.
Mr Henry has spent most of his working life in New Zealand however and his neutral accent is considered an advantage in the BBC, as are his relatively humble origins.
A problem confronting his candidacy though will be his exuberant delivery of seemingly spontaneous one-liners that conflict with the BBC’s twin underpinning doctrines of diversity and multiculturalism.
Mr Henry’s unsuccessful candidature as National Party (Conservative) Member of Parliament for the Wairarapa electorate would now not be considered a drawback for a top role at the BBC.
This is because of the sudden and overwhelmingly current vogue in the United Kingdom for authority figures who are not from a ruling class background, especially a public (i.e. private) school one, or an ivy league university one.
Mr Henry with his active New Zealand and Australia broadcasting career would also fill a generalised quota often jestingly referred to within the BBC as a colonial one.
His anchor role on his independent television eponymous breakfast show has been taken up temporarily by the be-whiskered Mark Sainsbury.
Mr Sainsbury has given the impression of being deliberately vague on the matter of the precise date of Mr Henry’s return to the popular early morning independent television show.
It is here that Mr Henry’s natural everyman style of exuberance sometimes bordering on bluster, and his absence of feigned political correctness is considered a strength by both audience and advertisers.
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