I was once invited into the Sky News studio to give my thoughts on teenage crime.  As I waited to me mic’d up I was looking at the presenter of the hourly news bulletin, all powdered, brushed, lip-glossed and ready to go.  Unseen by the viewer but visible to me, were teleprompters located just below every camera.  They began rolling as the news began and I remember thinking to myself.  Man!  I could do that.  I wondered how much she was on?  Maybe a £100,000 a year?  Nice work for reading accurately for a few minutes every hour or so.

I agree with Sir Terry Wogan that reading the news is a piece of cake.  A doddle.  Unlike correspondents in the field newsreaders don’t have to dodge bullets, crap in the bushes, relate what’s going on in their immeadiate surroundings while listening to a firefight and have a comfy chair to sit on.  Yet the Kate Silverton’s, Mark Austin’s and Natasha Kaplinsky’s of the news world get paid far more than your average Afghanistan war reporter, your undercover Iranian hack or your Somalian coastline correspondent.

Leaving the BBC for 5 News, Natasha Kaplinsky was paid in excess of £300,000 a year to present the news.  Six weeks after she made her debut she promptly announced she was pregnant.  I wonder if 5 News will conduct pregnancy tests before they splash out similar cash to any future female news presenters.

In this country we place too much regard for our newsreaders.  Trevor McDonald got a knighthood out of it.  For what?  Proving he can look all so very sombre while reading from an autocue?  Displaying a nice line in tie wear?  Now he’s this celebrated icon of broadcast news and presents occasional programmes about rich people living in the Caribbean.

If the BBC continue with their ageist policy then they could get rid of the likes of George Alagiah, Huw Edwards, Fiona Bruce or Sophie Raworth and replace them with eleven-year-olds who attend a school near BBC Television centre.  Place cushions on their seat, wash the chewing gum out of their hair, brush and powder them and tell them to read the autocue.  We could even make it part of their media studies.  Get a teacher to be the studio floor manager so they’ll be more comfortable.  They could really do it.  Can’t be that hard. 

At Sky News they could do something similar, although in their defence at least Kay Burley walks about a bit when she presents the news and Jeremy Thompson is first on a plane whenever some disaster befalls the world.  But let’s stop thinking that reading the news is some incredible, mind-boggling work of the highest skill.  Just think of it as reading a rolling newspaper ten yards away with very big letters but having to do it wearing your best make up or suit.