Best laugh of the night was The Lady & The Revamp, a TV fly-on-the-wall of Rachel Johnson's nascent editorship of the old cunties' weekly, The Lady.
Appointed just because of brother Boris' fame - editing her uni mag being her only other qualification - she stormed through the old banger with some startlingly original ideas. Such as sacking the fiction editor because he had a loud voice. Such as putting upcoming septuagenarian stars Julie Andrews and Joan Collins on the cover.
Phantom of the night was her embittered predecessor Arline Usden who ruled for 18 years and saw circulation dwindle from about 40,000 to 26,000. Rachel frothed at Arline's presence on the masthead as editor-at-large and as opera/travel/whatever contributor, even likening her to a norovirus lingering on the premises. Arline in turn sprayed venom on Rachel's magazine, advising her not to frighten the horses.
I haven't seen Arline in years. Last time we met, at the home of a former Good Housekeeping editor, she was recovering from an eye tuck: with her bruised sockets she looked like a fussy (but then slim) panda bear.
The old matriarch owner of The Lady described Arline's mag as "bland" while Rachel raged heretically that no one could give a toss about the publication and that its proprietors were living in a fantasy bubble: she was their link to the real world. What provoked her ire was their failure to enthuse about a 5000-word Sunday Times Magazine profile of Rachel by the mediocre Lesley White who'd likened The Lady to a corpse. In truth, the ST only bothered because of the Boris link.
And what of Rachel? Like her bro, she's direct, engaging, with a conventional brightness. Typical of her generation she is oblivious of legislation protecting the rights of employees - in the show she refused to understand why those of long tenure couldn't just be dumped with the trash. She did the usual bullying things of relocating unwanted staff to Siberian office outlands while the proprietors repaid staff loyalty with treacherous indifference - concerned only about appearances and legal niceties. Rachel has worked for the Sunday Times so perhaps she picked up these bad habits from them. Nonetheless part of me warmed to her: she's making the most of a lost cause.
At no point did I hear anyone explain what The Lady is for. Oh, and would someone repair its website. It never opens when I knock.
For certain Rachel will be looking for a new job very soon - she's wise to be keeping a diary.
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