Jed Mercurio’s Bodyguard harks back to the Johnson Dick affair
When not giving the ‘go‘ for an innocent man to be shot dead on the London Underground, Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick is on the PR trail. Last week Dick popped up on Good Morning Britain, the televised middle-class coffee morning, to discuss, among other things, Jed Mercurio’s BBC thriller Bodyguard.
Dick mistook fiction for fact, praising the show’s “senior” females as “role models”, who are, er, actors working to a script. A woman playing a top copper with five lines on the show is not the actual superior to the lower rank plod who plays the show’s star, the actual Bodyguard.
Cressida did, however, manage to say the show was “ridiculous”, turning off as soon as sexual signals were exchanged between the protector and the protected – in the show the Home Secretary and her Bodyguard shag. But is it so far fetched? No.
In 2011, the BBC reported on a real-life matter:
A police bodyguard to former Home Secretary Alan Johnson has been sacked after an inquiry into an alleged affair with the Labour MP’s wife.
PC Paul Rice, 45, was dismissed by the Metropolitan Police, which condemned him for damaging its reputation.
Mr Johnson quit as shadow chancellor in January as allegations surrounding the affair became public.
The Dick and Johnson Affair – not as ridiculous as it sounds.
Posted: 5th, September 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, TV & Radio Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
