IT’S ALL CHINESE TO ME

Quite some week, with inspiring victories for Lewis Hamilton and Barack Obama. Black really is the new black.

After weeks away working on the new series it was good to be home, where the burning issue was what my seven-year-old daughter would take to school for her show-and-tell. She wanted a picture of a pony. Instead we packed her off with a plastic model of Lewis Hamilton’s 2007 McLaren. It wasn’t actually Hamilton’s, it was Fernando Alonso’s, bought in Valencia this year from a department store desperate to shift its old McLaren/Alonso stock. Hamilton is a hate figure there now. (What is it with the Spanish and racism? It’s obviously Moorish.)

On the school run the girls talk about the race and the car. “It’s not really Lewis,” I say. “You could always paint the helmet yellow,” says my five-year-old.

The new series is a departure for us, a four-part comic documentary about money. “Why would you do that?” people asked when we started in February. Since then it’s become the biggest story in town. We’re all [Robert] Pestons now.

Tonight’s programme is about China and I’m a little embarrassed. We employed what we thought was a Chinese-speaking actor and were pleased with the result, until a friend pointed out he was speaking Cantonese. Still Chinese, but a minority dialect. With more than a billion Mandarin speakers, you’d think we could have found one. We could even have asked Paddy Ashdown, who speaks it, albeit with a Bosnian accent.

Ah well. The rest of the show is pretty accurate, although growth in China may slow to 6% or 7% next year, not 8% or 9%. Gordon Brown would kill for 6% growth.

SIGHT OF THE WEEK: A QUEUE

Tuesday, and I’m back in London for meetings and election night at the Frontline club with everyone talking animatedly and CNN/Fox/BBC on screens. This plays havoc with my ADD (attention deficit disorder) and I can’t understand the graphics. It feels like watching an American football game in the middle of a rave. In a snowstorm.

The image of Americans queuing for hours to vote was inspiring. We’re a nation of queuers, yet our elections aren’t like that. We revert to the 1940s on polling day: old signs outside church halls, makeshift booths with pencils on strings and a few old ladies who have volunteered to help with the exit poll. It feels less like voting than dropping something off at the charity shop.

OFF THE RAILS

Wednesday: train to Newcastle. With scripts to write, I decide to go first class: £344. Bloody hell. How are we going to lower our carbon footprint when it costs £344 to get to Newcastle by train and £9 to New York by plane? Profiteering on the railways still rankles. The Conservative government sold BR’s trains in 1996 for £73m. They were sold on later that year for £825m and on again to Abbey in 2000 for £1.4 billion. A bunch of banks including Lloyds TSB (now with £4 billion of taxpayers’ money) has just bought them for £2 billion. A 2,700% profit over 12 years. How much of that went into investment?

Arriving in Newcastle there are fireworks everywhere. They’re clearly celebrating Obama’s victory. Either that or Mike Ashley has found a buyer for the team.

On the television news it’s still Obama fever. Leaders are telephoning to congratulate him, including ours (“He may be the first black president. I’m the first Brown prime minister”). Many telephone John McCain to commiserate with the 72-year old. I wonder if Jonathan Ross left a message on his answerphone: “Your gwanddaugtah’s a Democwat! Get over it!”

On Channel 4 news, Joe Klein struggles to think of an angle for a Primary Colors about the president-elect. “Where’s the flaw? An excess of exercise?” Like Klein, I don’t want to find a flaw. I’m just delighted that someone my age, with two young daughters, is going to the White House. A vote against Obama would have been a vote against hope. But then I thought the same thing about Tony Blair. Let’s hope we don’t wake up in three years’ time to the news that America has invaded Spain.

YOUR PUDDING OR YOUR LIFE

After another show on Thursday I go to Theo Randall’s restaurant at London’s Intercontinental. The fire alarm goes off and the place is evacuated except for one elderly man who refuses to leave his pudding. “It’s too delicious,” he protests.

Back home at last, I think about Brown and Obama (“Today America; tomorrow, Glenrothes”). As I watch again the footage of Obama’s rousing victory speech, I hear a little voice in my head: “One small step for man, one more hour in make-up.”

Bremner, Bird & Fortune: Silly Money continues tonight on Channel 4 at 7pm

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