Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

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I am fairly sure that I am not the only regular BBC listener who had no idea that Evan Davis, presenter of Radio 4's PM programme, has been hosting a non-BBC podcast about heat pumps since 2024.

In fact, the first I heard of this side-line was the news that the BBC had told him he couldn't do it anymore.

Davis hosted 20 Happy Heat Pump podcasts after being given permission to do so by his BBC managers.

The podcast explored how heat pumps work, their advantages and drawbacks, and the contribution they can make to net zero 2050 - the UK's drive towards the long-term reduction of carbon emissions.

The last edition of the podcast began with the news that the plug was being pulled.

Davis appeared sad but philosophical: "I take their shilling", he said, referring to his BBC managers. "They dictate the rules, they know they have to keep their presenters out of areas of public controversy, and they have decided heat pumps can be controversial".

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He was quite explicit about the reasoning behind the BBC's decision to stop him hosting the non-BBC podcast: "I think the timetable set of net zero is slightly in play as an issue politically and so people who want us not to go full on for net zero 2050 will pick on problems with heat pumps… I had this argument with the BBC - it's more about net zero than about this particular form of heating."

His co-host Bean Beanland, of the Heat Pump Federation, put it even more starkly: "It does seem to me that, somehow, we've - the technologies that we espouse - have fallen victim to some sort of culture war."

The BBC's guidelines state that staff and regular presenters or reporters associated with its news or public policy-related output "may offer professional judgements rooted in evidence" - which would appear to provide Davis leeway to be involved in the podcast.

But they also state that "it is not normally appropriate for them to present or write personal view content on public policy, matters of political or industrial controversy, or 'controversial subjects' in any area".

It is clear that the BBC has been wrestling with the concept of "controversy", and what impartiality means and how it should be applied.

Sadly, it appears to often confuse impartiality with 'both-siding' - presenting two opposing views and allowing the audience to make up its mind. This is all very well when there is legitimate debate to be had - when there is a genuine difference of opinion between honest people of goodwill. The problem is that our public discourse is now dominated by dishonest people who lie routinely.

For figures such as Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump (and there are plenty of domestic examples in the UK), lying is a practical tool - the intention is to make people distrust everything; to confuse them about what the facts of an issue are; to doubt, in fact, if there is actually any such thing as the truth. People who cannot be sure of any objective truth are easier to control.

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Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

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A company that was placed on the 'VIP' priority route for COVID contracts under the last Conservative Government, saw their profits soar to £178 million after successfully lobbying a senior Conservative peer to help them secure a contract for hundreds of millions of pounds worth of coronavirus tests that were later deemed mostly unusable.

Financial records reveal that Southampton based company Primer Design Ltd, owned by French parent company Novacyt, had a bumper year during the first year of COVID. Its turnover in 2019 was £5.5 million, but following the award of two huge VIP contracts from the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) in 2020, this ballooned to £273 million of which £178 million was declared as profit . Two of the firms' directors received bonuses of £8.5 million and £3 million.

Accounts filed by Primer Design brag that sales "grew by over 4,800%" driven "principally" by its UK Government contracts.

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Primer Design were awarded its first £63 million contract by the DHSC in April 2020, this was followed by a £406 million deal in September 2020 - a two year contract to supply PCR COVID tests.

According to analysis by Private Eye, Primer Design recorded a profit margin of 65.3% during the first COVID period, which led to them occupying the top spot in its league table of profitable pandemic contract winners.

Private Eye, noted that Primer Design's profit margins were "double the world's most profitable company and creator of the most in demand "intellectual property", Apple, and three times that achieved by Google".

The contracts ended in disaster, after the DHSC deemed the testing kits supplied by Primer Design to be "unfit for public use" and lacking the "robustness" required. The majority of the kits were never used - resulting in the UK Government attempting to seek a £145 million refund from Primer Design and its parent company, Novacyt, via the UK courts.

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Both firms rejected the claims made by the DHSC and tried to counter sue the Government, eventually reaching an out of court settlement in June last year.

Questions still remained about how the firm was able to secure its place on the VIP lane. However, documents released to Byline Times now shed new light on this matter.

Novacyt's cozy relationship with Lord Bethell.

Lord Bethell held three meetings with executives from Novacyt on 4 April 2020 and 6 April 2020 to discuss the firm's COVID-19 testing capabilities - meetings that the Conservative Peer failed to declare until June 2021, some 14 months later, as first reported by Byline Times.

However, emails disclosed to Byline Times via the Freedom of Information Act show that former Health Minister, Lord Bethell, was in regular correspondence with Novacyt and Primer Design in the days before the company landed its first VIP lane contract in April 2020.

Here's what the emails reveal:

Following a telephone meeting between Lord Bethell and Novacyt, the firm emailed Lord Bethell attaching a memo containing a series of requests where "the Government can help Novacyt" as it begins "scaling up of the COVID-19 testing requirements". The four-page doc...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Democracy campaigners have called for urgent reform of UK electoral law, after Byline Times revealed that the UK's official elections watchdog keeps no records of how many overseas donors are bankrolling British political parties.

A Freedom of Information request from this paper asked how many reportable donations had been made to the major political parties by registered overseas voters since 2019.

Our request came after the last Conservative Government abolished the 15-year rule which previously barred British citizens who had lived abroad for more than 15 years from voting in UK elections.

Because being a registered voter in the UK also comes with the right to make political donations, this has increased the number of people able to donate from abroad. 191,338 people registered as overseas voters ahead of the 2024 general election.

However, the Electoral Commission responded that they do not keep any data on whether donations are from domestic or overseas voters.

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This means that major donations could have come in from Brits who have lived abroad for more than 50 years, including those living in hostile states with an interest in manipulating UK elections.

The Electoral Commission said "Anyone who is registered to vote in the UK can make donations to political parties and campaigners. This includes those British citizens living overseas and means they are also allowed to donate to political parties and campaigners in the UK.

Political parties must report relevant donations, those that are over the reporting thresholds, to the Commission and these are published on our register of donations. This is an important part of providing transparency to voters over the money donated to parties.

When reporting donations, parties must include the name of individual donors and their address. However, the legislation, the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, does not allow us to publish the address of individual donors, including if they are overseas."

The news that the Electoral Commission does not keep records of overseas donors comes as Reform UK announced that they are going on a donations drive among wealthy non-doms in Monaco, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland. Nick Candy, Reform UK's treasurer told the Financial Times that "You have to be on the UK electoral register or the overseas electoral register or have a UK trading company".

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"There are plenty of people in Monaco, Switzerland, the Isle of Man, Guernsey, who can meet both of those criteria to donate".

Candy also told the FT that "We'll do events in restaurants, people's private homes and on yachts".

Rose Whiffen of Transparency International said "Concerns were raised when the rules on overseas voting were changed, that this would open the door to foreign funding of UK political parties. In such cases it may also be harder to detect individuals acting as a front for someone else and their money. Until the Electoral Commission discloses how much each party receives from overseas voters, the public will be in the dark about how significant this change has been. Without this data, our ability to monitor and safeguard our democratic processes ...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

When Keir Starmer travelled to Washington DC to burnish the UK's global credentials last February, one of his first stops after his meeting with President Donald Trump wasn't a UN forum or humanitarian body. Rather, it was Palantir - a controversial American surveillance tech company, headquartered just a 10-minute drive from the Oval Office.

The visit was, as the Good Law Project revealed, arranged by Peter Mandelson - Britain's Ambassador to the United States and a long-time Labour power broker. Yet no official record was kept: no minutes, no transcript. Just a handshake, a quiet word, and - for many - a growing unease

Palantir is no ordinary tech firm. Rising to prominence out of the War on Terror, seeded with funds from the CIA's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, and raised on a diet of contracts with spy agencies and the US military, Palantir is arguably the bastard child of military-industrial intelligence gathering, co-founded by Peter Thiel, a self-described conservative libertarian.

Palantir's tools have been used to deport migrant families, enable drone warfare, and entrench policing systems later accused of fuelling institutional racism.

Recent reporting by 404 Media reveals that the company's collaboration with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deepened under the new Trump administration. Building on its previous involvement, the company is now actively supplying leads to help locate individuals targeted for deportation.

Now, Palantir is over here. It sits at the heart of the UK's NHS - its UK head recently boasted, "Every NHS hospital has its own instance of #Palantir software" - and has secured hundreds of millions in Government contracts with the Ministry of Defence (MOD), health service, police, local councils, and an array of other bodies.

What precisely Starmer and Mandelson discussed with Palantir remains unknown. The Cabinet Office insists it was merely an "informal visit". Yet the circumstances are far from casual.

At the time of the trip, Palantir was still a client of Global Counsel - the lobbying firm founded by Mandelson. Though Mandelson had stepped back from CEO duties, he remains president and chair of its international advisory board.

Then there is former MP and Labour peer Tom Watson, who The Times revealed had taken up a paid position on the company's 'public services advisory board'. Watson is also a senior advisor to PR firm Lodestone Oxford Limited, which listed Palantir as a client between October and December 2024.

So once again, we find a Labour leader aligning with certain men - and we must ask where do their loyalties truly lie: with shared political mission or with private profit?

Questioning this matters because Palantir's ambitions are unmistakable: it aims to become the default operating system for government. Its Foundry platform already underpins key parts of the NHS, thanks to its lead role in a £330 million consortium contract for the now widely implemented Federated Data Platform - an agreement so heavily redacted that three-quarters of its 586 pages were blacked out.

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More information about the deal only came to light following legal action by the Good Law Project, which uncovered that Palantie was handed the contract before negotiations had concluded.

The Foreign Office says it has no emails about Mandelson's role arranging Starmer's visit. Elsewher...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay has challenged Nigel Farage to a debate on climate change, calling him a "con artist", after the Reform UK leader hesitated to say he accepted the link between human activity and rising global temperatures.

BBC Radio 4 Today presenter Nick Robinson this week asked Farage if he accepted that climate change is at least partly man made.

Farage replied only that "it may well be". When pushed by Robinson, Farage agreed to start the conversation from the premise that manmade CO2 emissions "are having a detrimental or at least warming effect on the world".

Metastudies have shown that over 99% of climate scientists agree that we are experiencing anthropogenic climate change.

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The Sixth Assessment report for the Intercontinental Panel on Climate Change states that "Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming" and that "every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards".

Farage stated during the interview that the UK "makes no difference whatsoever" to climate change and argued that the UK should expand its gas production to become self-sufficient. He contended that reductions in the UK's carbon emissions had made the UK poorer, and that the emissions had been exported to China and India through deindustrialisation.

Adrian Ramsay the co-leader of the Green Party told Byline Times that "Nigel Farage's interview highlighted just how out of touch and dangerously misguided he is on climate and the need for a liveable future […] There are huge economic opportunities for us if we improve public transport, support our farmers to produce more food locally, improve home insulation, which will bring bills down".

"Reform pose as the anti-establishment party. But nothing could be further from the truth. If you look at the fact that their leading figures are all rich millionaires, that they've got policies that are just designed to support the super-rich. They were very embodiment of the establishment and trying to pose as the friend of ordinary people".

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Ramsay suggested that Farage's views may be linked to the financial interests of his donors, labelling him a "con artist"

"Nigel Farage is a performer, a con artist. He will say or do anything. He will happily dance to a populist tune regardless of its impact. Let's not forget he's bankrolled by fossil fuel interests, climate deniers, and major polluters - taking in £2.3 million since the 2019 election."

Ramsay added that if Farage refused his challenge for debate that it "would say a lot wouldn't it that he's not willing to. He's not confident in being able to make his argument. It didn't stand up the scrutiny of the Today program and it wouldn't stand up to scrutiny in a debate".

Reform UK did not respond to a request for comment.

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

As the four great non-thinkers of our age - Donald Trump, JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Marco Rubio - flushed the withered remnants of America's diplomatic credibility down the gold-plated toilet of time, Vladimir Putin unleashed unholy hell on the city of Kyiv last night.

At 1 am, when everyone was home due to the midnight curfew, air raid alarms sounded in Kyiv. This is a regular occurrence; many of them are false alarms, and the tendency is to wait and see if anything happens. About fifteen minutes later, the sound of air defence rockets and heavy machine gun fire echoed through the city's suburbs. Again, this is a fairly regular event, but what followed has shaken the city to its core.

In a few moments, what began as a regular air raid escalated into a full-on combined Shahed drone, Iskander ballistic missile, and cruise missile attack. The buildings in downtown Kyiv trembled as rocket after rocket struck the city. Outside, a few revellers on the wrong side of the curfew screamed and dashed for shelter. Searchlights illuminated the night sky as air defence gunners tracked the high-pitched, tell-tale whine of drones circling the city.

At the same time, the bright orange trails of ballistic missile engines streaked across the sky, impacting with sickening, deep explosions on apartment blocks. Kyiv, usually well defended with American Patriot missile systems, was overwhelmed by the scale of the attack. As emergency service vehicles raced to the scenes, reports of fires raging across the city were posted on social media. Acrid smoke and ash drifting on the night breeze served as ominous portents of what would later emerge.

This morning, I drove to the scene of the most devastating attack: a housing

complex in the Svaytoshinsky neighbourhood, fifteen minutes from downtown Kyiv. The

destruction was total and complete. It's hard to convey the extent of the destruction; the

best I can manage is that an area of four to five football pitches was in ruins.

At a press briefing, the official death toll was adjusted from nine to eight, as rescuers had

mistakenly assumed that body parts recovered from the ruins were a victim's, when in fact

they were limbs from the confirmed dead. Over a hundred people, including many children, have been wounded.

Ten people had officially been reported as missing. Heavy-duty lifting equipment and

hundreds of search and rescue workers, many with sniffer dogs, combed the wreckage

looking for more bodies.

The elderly were the most tragic. They milled about, comforted by their neighbours, yet still in a state of deep shock as they surveyed the remnants of their lives now strewn across the rubble-filled gardens. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko surveyed the ruins and invited Donald Trump to come and see for himself the Russian atrocities.

In total, 70 missiles and 150 Shahed drones were unleashed on Ukraine last night. Such

coordinated attacks are not spontaneous and require weeks of planning. The deep fear here is that America's slide into total alignment with Russia raises a more sinister question about the timing of the attack.

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

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As Britain approaches the 1 May local council elections, it faces the alarming rise of a far-right political force. Reform UK, a party that has its roots in anti-EU sentiment and is steeped in Islamophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric, is gaining ground.

With its rise comes a serious threat to Muslims and other minority communities in Britain. The party's record of Islamophobic rhetoric, racist remarks, and divisive policies represents a danger to social cohesion and the democratic fabric of this country.

Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party, was rebranded in 2021 and gained a major boost with its leader Nigel Farage's return to politics. Since he was elected as an MPS for Clactor, the party has achieved alarming electoral successes.

Most recently, Reform unseated Labour in the Tameside by-election in Greater Manchester and is predicted to make further gains in the Runcorn by-election, which coincides with the local elections.

These victories are not isolated. Reform now holds 113 council seats, including 66 Conservative defections. Polling shows they are rivalling Labour and the Conservatives, and in some areas, even leading.

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This surge mirrors a broader European trend of far-right advances such as the rise of parties like Alternative for Germany (AfD). In the 2024 general election, Reform secured 4.1 million votes, the largest ever vote share for a far-right party in the UK. Recent polls show their support growing, with some placing Reform ahead of both major parties.

Central to Reform's appeal has been the weaponisation of immigration, Islamophobia and national identity. Reform presents itself as the voice of the forgotten, using sensationalist media coverage and social media to target voters. While most Reform supporters are older white men, support among younger age groups is rising. Reform dominated social media interactions during the election period and are the most boosted UK politicians on X. Their messaging resonates with a demographic increasingly drawn to populist narratives that blame immigrants and minorities for national decline.

Reform's success has largely been driven by widespread public disillusionment with the political mainstream. Voters frustrated by Conservative failures and disappointed by Labour's direction, particularly their proposed welfare cuts, have been drawn to Reform. A Hope Not Hate report found 68% of people feel ignored by politicians, a sentiment Reform exploits to push its divisive agenda.

Despite its denials, Reform UK is widely recognised by experts as a far-right party and has been identified as the biggest far-right threat in Britain today. Reform UK has also been embraced by extremist groups who see it as a legitimate path to power. During the 2024 general election, far-right groups and figures, including Tommy Robinson, Britain First, and Patriotic Alternative, urged their followers to support Reform.

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Mark Collett of Patriotic Alternative, praised Reform for campaigning on a platform "more right-wing than the BNP" and encouraged far-right extremists to infiltrate R...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

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Earlier this week, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced that the Government will, for the first time, publish detailed data on foreign national offenders and the crimes they've committed.

Framed as a bid to "better inform the public", this move is in reality nothing short of a cynical political stunt - one designed to placate the rising wave of the radical right, led by Nigel Farage and Reform UK.

In making this data public, the Government is weaponising immigration through crime statistics. We know that this risks increasing racial discrimination and deepening the effects of the Hostile Environment for migrant communities.

In the wake of the August 2024 riots, it became painfully clear that racial tensions and the strength of the far-right had reached a dangerous peak. Any political party in power would have to think carefully about containing the threat of the radical right, and there is no arguing that Labour needs a bold strategy. However, Labour have chosen time and time again to appease the far-right by giving ammunition to their concerns about immigration.

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Labour's latest focus on Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) is not new. It follows a well-worn path taken by successive governments, one that isolates migrant communities and conflates migration with criminality. The Conservative Party spent years leaning into anti-migrant rhetoric and criminalising migrants through the Hostile Environment, in a blatant attempt to distract from their own failures on the economy, the degradation of public services and an increasing housing crisis. It is harmful and it doesn't work. Its lasting legacy has been helping to create the conditions for the far right to thrive.

This then begs the question - what problem is Labour trying to resolve by publishing this data?

Data on offenders is already collected across the justice system and publicly available. It does not currently include data on nationality, as to do so would imply that where you were born has an impact on the crime you might commit. There is a wealth of research and evidence that shows sustained poverty, peer pressure, substance abuse, family relationships, access to education and poor mental health, all contribute to risk of crime. There is no evidence to suggest that where you were born is a significant indicator.

Any selective publication of data must also be compared against the offending of British nationals if it is to be truly transparent about the concerns and risks to society. By treating statistics in isolation, the Government is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and distracting from more meaningful discussions around justice, accountability and human rights.

It is important to remember that people who are classed as FNOs have already been convicted and served their sentences. Deportation as a result of committing an offence amounts to double punishment and does nothing to aid rehabilitation. This group can include people who have lived in the UK for the majority of their lives.

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We saw this when Windrush victims who only ever knew Britain as their home were deported to Jamaica after serving...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Journalism is in a profound crisis. Legacy media and publishing have been starved of advertising income as billions have been siphoned off by tech giants like Alphabet and Facebook. Meanwhile, those same digital monopolies have reneged on their commitments to news and truth, instead focusing on clickbait and attention harvesting as their business models.

Look at X. The original Twitter, the world's 'town square' where Byline Times built its original audience and commissioned so many of its contributors, has been turned by the richest man in the world into a political weapon and a vortex of hate. By gaming the algorithm, twisting the verification systems and rewarding viral lies, Elon Musk actively spread the kind of disinformation that led to Britain's biggest ever post-war riots last summer.

Musk has declared (along with Tommy Robinson) that "we are the media now" - and the terrifying thing is that he's right.

It's not just former pundits or comedians who turn to Rumble and YouTube to monetise their disgrace. It's not just Russian propagandists who take over TikTok to sway electorates. These days, our conservative politicians and mainstream press take their cues from Musk more than Murdoch. While Boris Johnson gets a well-padded berth at the Daily Mail, another failed Prime Minister, Liz Truss, is starting her own social media platform to attack 'woke culture' and 'elites'. And why ever not? Politainment pays much better than political honesty.

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It's a revolutionary change. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and in some ways the Godfather of the personal computing age, recently told The New York Times that he was optimistic about the impact of Big Tech on the world - until social media came along.

Twenty years ago, the democratisation of the means of journalistic production, distribution and exchange opened up a brave new world - new voices, citizen bloggers, live updated coverage, on-the-ground films and reports. But now?

As those innovations were gobbled up by vast global platforms, their business model relied on engagement, keeping us glued to our smartphones, increasingly through envy or outrage. Now, new voices - especially young people - are more likely to get monstered than heard. The de-skilling of journalism and the disaggregation of news have led to the elevation of conspiracy theories and inflammatory propaganda.

We've gone straight from a Gilded Information Age into the Dark Ages of Disinformation.

There is a precedent for this. The innovations of Gutenberg and the printing press 500 years ago fostered the Enlightenment and the development of science and democracy. But the democratisation of reading and writing also led to nearly two centuries of religious war. We are on the brink of something similar, as we all live in our silos of bespoke news, the loss of trust in a shared reality is fracturing any sense of common purpose.

During these days that the journalist Carole Cadwalladr has described as 'total information collapse', it is more important than ever that journalists adhere to the standards of verity, verification, accuracy and accountability for our survival. That mission must be shared and transparent to be democratic and effective. And that's why Byline Times has joined over a hundred other publishers in the only independent press regulator in the UK - Impress.

The Tribunal of Truth

Bylin...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

During the fraught process of staging Bloody Difficult Women - my 2022 play about Gina Miller's Supreme Court cases against the Governments of Theresa May and Boris Johnson - the actor Graham Seed approached me with a new problem: he was playing a gay character but he happened to be heterosexual.

He explained that, in the acting profession, this isn't really done any more - just as it's verboten for white actors to 'black up' to play characters of colour or for actors who can walk perfectly well to sit in wheelchairs.

After seeing four of the six members of the cast come down with Covid, a flurry of legal letters from the Daily Mail over our temerity to portray its Editor-in-Chief Paul Dacre on stage, and one of our actors forgetting their lines at a preview when the Guardian had come in to review, I decided that this was one additional issue I could do without.

So I sat down, got out a red pen, and hastily rewrote the script, changing the name of his character to Huw, and giving him a wife called Vicki and five children. Handing the pages over, I asked if he could possibly cope with being a married bisexual father and, happily, he could.

This was the spring of 2022 and, while a great many of my friends at the BBC had been telling me about how Huw Edwards was conducting himself, the full story had yet to break - so I thought it legally a good idea not to confide in Seed my inspiration.

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Of course, I agree with the concept of colour-blind casting, and the same goes for able-bodied actors playing disabled characters. But, when it comes to sexuality, I am honestly not so sure.

Sexuality is, for a start, often hard to define. Some people aren't entirely straight or gay, in the way that no one can ever be not entirely black or white or find themselves only ever intermittently unable to walk or just going through a 'phase'.

It complicates matters still further that some of the most resolutely masculine and heterosexual men I have ever encountered have had very feminine sides to their characters. I recall an interview with the strongman Geoff Capes and seeing him tenderly talking to one of his many budgerigars. The opposite was true of Harry Andrews - the rugged tough-guy star of war films such as The Hill and The Red Beret - who just happened to be gay and lived with his one-time Ice Cold in Alex co-star Basil Hoskins in the Sussex countryside.

If these gay casting sensibilities had existed in the past, Peter Finch would never have been allowed to play Dr Daniel Hirsh or Oscar Wilde in respectively Sunday Bloody Sunday and The Trials of Wilde. Nor would we have ever got to see John Hurt playing Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant. That would have been to deprive the world of some unforgettable performances and it is legitimate to ask whether gay actors would have acquitted themselves any better - or indeed any more convincingly - in these and so many other roles.

I need hardly add that the natural corollary to all of this would be to confine gay actors to only ever playing gay parts, which, given gay roles still don't come up all that often, would be to deprive them of a great deal of work and, indeed, their fans of much of a chance to see them.

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