Fulham Profile

Wild excitement yesterday: the Beeb rang me! Then a slight deflation; they wanted me to talk about Bishop John of Fulham. Eventually sense prevailed and I realised they wanted something about a man of the moment, not an old has-been like me. So this afternoon I used my geriatric bus-pass to go into Southampton. There at Radio Solent HQ they clamped headphones on me, and sat me in a cubicle waiting for lights to go on.

The Programme is called "Profile". It tries to do something to give, as they explained, a more rounded picture of people in the news than the media usually manage. So I had to do my best to demolish the image set up by WATCH and their allies of some monstrous wife-beating misogynist. Not difficult, really; who could imagine Bishop John getting away with beating Judy! And as for misogyny, the truth is that there are many women clerics in the dioceses where he works who look to HIM for support against the rabid women-hating-but-pretend-supporters among the hierarchies who have done more to harm women's ministry than anything perpetrated by Forward in Faith.

It is a fourteen minute programme; they recorded me for fifteen, and mine is only one contribution among many, so whatever I was able to say will be seriously filleted. For all that, I hope they manage to do some justice to a man who has borne the heat and burden for so long.

Even now people are carping about the statement he has issued on behalf of Forward in Faith. Of course he does not, and connot, say "we must all be come members of the Ordinariate tomorrow". He believes he must still screw what little concessions he can from Synod, not for himself but for those unable or, at present, unwilling to enter the Ordinariate. It will be no easy task, but John Broadhurst has never flinched at difficult tasks.

The programme goes out on BBC Radio 4 at 7pm on Saturday (unless, I suppose, the golf, or some minr coup, intervenes) and is repeated on Sunday at 5.40pm.