ITV's News at Ten goes live
ITV’s very own, original, accept no substitutes News at Ten returned last night a little over 40 years after its debut and some three years after it had been killed off.
The chimes rang out and there, sitting down, which has not been ITV style for a while, was Sir Trevor McDonald, accompanied by the attractive Julie Etchingham from Sky News, who turned out to have a better grasp about which camera to look at than the veteran newscaster tempted out of retirement for one final campaign.
The fluorescent Thames backdrop was pretty amazing. The bulletin’s much touted exclusive, an interview in Pakistan with Princess Diana’s lover Hasnat Khan.
Visually, the biggest coup was a live interview from within a melting Antarctic glacier with ITV’s Bill Neely. It was a beautiful set piece.
But on the BBC Ten O’Clock News, Huw Edwards was not taking his new competition lying down. Indeed, he stood up to introduce a report from John Simpson, who had been smuggled into Zimbabwe, from where the BBC has been long banned.
