You can be forgiven for being unaware of it since Rupert Murdoch got bored of it losing millions and shut down its terrestrial output, but in the recesses of the internet Talk TV is still going – and rentagob presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer still practicing her unique interview style.
The channel does seek to gain eyeballs for their output by flooding social media with clips of its interviews – but curiously chose not to promote an interview Hartley-Brewer did last week about a new ‘cycle street’ in Cambridge in which she claimed cyclists went faster than cars, downgraded Amsterdam’s population to 75,000 and said the UK couldn’t be “run around 25-year-olds in Lycra”.
The right wing blowhard was speaking to cycling journalist Laura Laker about a new ‘cycle street’ just opened in Cambridge.The first of its kind in England, the £2.4m scheme in the west of the city gives pedestrians and cyclists priority over motorists, with the removal of much of the on-road parking, the installation of wider footpaths and redesigned junctions.
“Is this the future of our roads in cities?,” said Hartley-Brewer, introducing the segment ominously. “I fear it is.”
After complaining that cyclists did not have number plates and were therefore not held responsible for their actions, and that bikes “can be going faster than cars on the street”, Hartley-Brewer asked: “Why should they be given priority on a road when an awful lot of people need their cars?”.
Laker responded that “if you talk about licences, I think it makes it quite difficult for people to take it up. And where do you stop? Do you make children be licenced? It doesn’t make any sense.
“And with any good transport system, you don’t just provide for one means of transport. You’ve got the motorways and A-roads for fast, long journeys. And you’ve got the residential roads for the short trips. On those residential roads, you want people to have a choice. It’s quite lacking in our transport system, actually most people want to cycle.”
This led to an explosion from an apoplectic Hartley-Brewer, who refused to let Laker get a word in, saying “No, they don’t! No, they don’t! No, no, no, Laura, Laura!”, “Laura, my darling, you’re confusing” and “Laura, you can keep saying it, but… Laura, Laura, Laura, stop!” before concluding “Earth calling Laura. Most people don’t… She’s just going to carry on. Can you just turn her mic off so we can actually explain?”.
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Once Laker’s microphone was safely switched off, Hartley-Brewer was able to explain her slightly confused point, saying: “Most people would love to… but they’re not young and healthy people who can put their cycle kit on and cycle along their nice flat road to a place that’s 20 minutes away. That’s not how most people live, that’s how some young people in central cities live. But it’s not how the vast majority of people live. We can’t run the entire country around 25-year-olds in Lycra.”
Once Laker was allowed back on, she compared the situation to the Netherlands, where “you’ll see all sorts of people riding and walking, you get elderly people on bikes”.
“People compare London to Amsterdam. Amsterdam has a population of 75,000” said Hartley-Brewer. The Dutch capital has a population of over 930,000 within the city proper and 1.5 million in its wider urban area.
Still, not that many people saw it – even on social media where, despite the fact the station usually floods the likes of X with clips in a bid to get more eyeballs on their output, curiously not a single second of Hartley-Brewer’s bike crash made the cut. If a TV presenter crashes on a cycle path and there’s no one there to see it, does it make a noise?
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