Right place, wrong day: Peston gives anti-vaxxers the slip

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IT WAS a mixed bag for self-styled “anti-vax” protesters yesterday. On the plus side, their demonstration against news channels was at least at the right building. They had previously mobbed the BBC’s Television Centre in White City, only to find out it hadn’t been used by the corporation since 2013. But their chants outside ITN’s Grays Inn Road headquarters to “bring out Peston” had a fatal flaw. Robert Peston, right, tells us: “I wasn’t at ITN ... I was out of London.” The presenter hypothesised how Gil Peck, the protagonist of his new novel The Whistleblower, set in the Blair years, would have reacted. He said: “[Peck] would not have noticed the fracas, because he would have been in the Groucho plying a contact with drink to get a story— it’s 1997 remember.” The book has a conspiracy theory plot that may appeal to the protesters, with “a dark web of interests that link politics, finance and the media”.