“I COULD HAVE KILLED THEM ALL.”
No, we’re not violently rewording Adele lyrics, rather quoting the moment one Sky News reporter went full-on Partridge live on air.
Following claims by a top government intelligence advisor that UK churches, in areas under threat from jihadism, should have their own guards, Sky News sent Martin Brunt to film a report outside a church where a service was going on inside.
While all pretty textbook to begin with - slow walk to the camera, hands clasped at the waist – it suddenly derailed into near parody. Visibly disappointed that there was no obvious security (again, it’s just a church in England), Brunt purposely strides inside, emerging a brief few seconds later to claim that if he were a terrorist he could have killed the entire congregation.
“BANG!”
Ok, so he didn’t finish with that line, but it's the sort of fear-mongering even Norfolk's finest might have balked at. Of course, there's more than a touch of Partridge's original television home of The Day Today about it too.
In a world full of 24hr headlines of terror attacks, social media feeds drowning in grim footage of bombs and shootings, is this a man we should really trust reporting the news? A man who staunchly believes that if he were an armed terrorist he’d massacre an entire church of people in the middle of nowhere because there were no bouncers there? Frankly, he looks like he just needs to calm down a bit.
Let’s hope he wandered off for a giant bar of Toblerone.
