Darling these things just happen when you get old I explain Eehh! he repeats pityingly

Darling, these things just happen when you get old, I explain “Eehh!” he repeats, pityingly. I don’t think, frankly, I’m going to score today.He is, he says, enjoying his new job a lot. He didn’t work for a couple of months after the scandal because “I didn’t want to cash in on my disgrace”.But then Andi Peters, the former children’s presenter and now head of youth commissions at Channel 4, invited him in for a talk “He said: `Coming to Channel 4 would be a good move How about The Big Breakfast?’ I said I’d love to The show has a very strong image So I then met the show’s boss who said: `Hmm, Bacon. I know, we’ll have a spot called Streaky Bacon in which you run up to tell people to take their clothes off!’”I don’t think Richard is an especially profound thinker I ask if he ever reads, and he says no, not really.

“Someone recently told me I had to read The Beach, that I wouldn’t be able to put it down. But half-way through I was so bored I couldn’t be bothered to pick it up!” Still, he is only 23.Richard Bacon was born and brought up in Nottingham. His childhood ambition, he says, was always to be on television one day. Why? Because, he says, his father, a prominent solicitor, was often interviewed by Central TV, “which I found very exciting”. And because he once saw Caron Keating filming a Blue Peter outside broadcast “I was about 10, and Caron was gorgeous.

I always had dreams it would be me one day.”He started off at Radio Nottingham while still at school, first as a researcher for the Saturday night evening programme, then as a weekend news reporter then, finally, as a full-time news reporter before moving to the cable channel L!ve TV, as a presenter.L!ve TV, which is owned by The Mirror and is so good that absolutely nobody watches it, was, he says, a good experience.His best moment, he says, was when he was dispatched to cover the opening of Parliament with the News Bunny and was wearing, for some reason, a latex mask of Prince Charles and a blond wig. The police complained, and in their later report said L!ve TV representatives had said: “We are going to report the state opening of Parliament with a man wearing a rabbit suit in the foreground and the soldiers and carriages in the background.”Richard was expelled from the location, and then banned. He thinks this a shame because “it would have been really funny to see News Bunny alongside the Queen’s car.” He has a brilliant tabloid mentality himself, I think, which is why, perhaps, he can so cheerfully accept what happened to him.He applied for the Blue Peter job when he heard Tim Vincent had resigned. He has always been fantastically ambitious, and immediately rushed over his CV and show reel. For his audition he had to jump on a trampoline, handle a snake and make a Christmas card “It was a house, cut from pink card.

You had to outline the window shapes with glue, then sprinkle on glitter, shake the glitter off…”When he told his mum he’d got the job “she jumped up and down with excitement. You know, the show is an institution.” And when he told her he’d lost it? “She was upset, but supported me. And my dad, too.” I wonder if, since his departure, he’s heard of any plans to, say, turn Mabel into a sniffer dog, so that she can vet Konnie and Katy and Stuart and Simon when they arrive on set in the mornings “No I haven’t,” he says. But, again, he laughs heartily.There is nothing evil about Richard Bacon He isn’t messed up He doesn’t seem to have any deep psychological problems He did the coke because, quite simply, he fancied it The only problem, if there is one, is that he is 23.