Welcome to Question Time...

...and you're welcome to it.

After its ridiculous outing to Edinburgh last week, QT was back to normal tonight. In London. Chaired by a relaxed and happy Dumbleby, pleased to be on his home ground and just generally pleased with himself. The panel was made up of the usual suspects: the mayor of London, a man with delusions of grandeur who fancies himself as a future prime minister; a comic who spent so much time grinning at the audience he couldn't possibly know what the other panellists were saying, and who addressed everyone as 'mate' although he now lives in Hollywood and hasn't lived or worked in the UK for a few years; a slightly mad journalist with nothing new to say; and a couple of politicians.

The female politician had to tolerate constant interruption, some of it from the chairman of the programme, as it took one of the audience to point out.

Every question led Boris Johnston to answer as if it referred only to London. There was a lengthy question about drug-taking in the UK, despite the fact that the politicians on the panel pointed out drug-taking is down and has been in decline for a decade, but that allowed Russell Brand to talk about his own drug experiences, which are quite far in the past now. This is what he usually does. Well, he's on this programme quite a lot and it's really all he can talk about. There was a question about bankers which allowed Johnston and the chair of the panel to repeat the usual accusation that the last Labour government was entirely responsible for the recession. Three years since the last election and still no action has been taken against the banksters, as no one on the programme pointed out.

At that point, I switched off. This used to be the BBC's flagship political programme. There is neither heat nor light here now. It's time Dumbleby was retired, along with his producer, and a new format devised that gives equal time to men and women and to politicians from all parties, to people with something new to say - say community activists - and that stops the chairman acting as if he was in some kind of stage show with himself as the star.

Somebody let me know when that happens. Meanwhile, I'll be reading reading the occasional political blog and reading my book.