STEADY ON EDDIE!

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Just six hours after the start of the general election and the BBC was already in full cry against the Tories. Even Eddie Mair.
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His summary of the events of the day near the start of tonight's PM had not got far before he said, "Advanced copies of Mr Cameron's remarks given to the media indicated that he would list the people he called 'The Great Ignored'. He would say 'young, old, rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight' but when it came to it 'gay' and 'straight' weren't mentioned." The clip of Mr Cameron' speech followed. Eddie's introduction ensured that the listener did not hear it for what David Cameron was saying but for what the BBC wanted us notice that he hadn't said, thus sabotaging the Conservative leader's message.
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No such sabotage occurred before the clips of Gordon Brown's speech that followed, ensuring that the listener (or at least any listener who doesn't drift into a coma at the very sound of that man's voice) heard what Gordon Brown wanted them to hear. Nor before the clip from Nick Clegg.
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In the interview with William Hague that followed, as freddo41 has pointed out, Eddie ferociously pursued the BBC's other angle of attack on the same story as above, with eight out of fourteen of his questions being about Chris Grayling (whose ears would have been burning at the time), insulting questions put with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. William Hague handled it without losing his cool or his good humour. I agree it might have been better if he had lost both and savaged the BBC's obsessive reporting of this story over the last three days. The interruption coefficient here was a hefty 1.4.
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I am disappointed with Eddie Mair.
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Still, after a gentle interview with Sir Ming Campbell (I.C. of just 0.2), Eddie partially redeemed himself with an interview with Ed Miliband that pressed that strange young man about Gordon Brown's deeply suspicious reluctance to be open about documents relating to his calamitous bargain basement sale of our gold reserves (I can only hope Carolyn Quinn didn't hear him asking about it!) and then pressed him about the idiotic remarks of Brown ally Angela Smith that Britain will be all the stronger for coming out of recession last (I.C of 1.1).
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TAGGED-ON BIT:
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This is what Mr Grayling actually said:

"I think we need to allow people to have their own consciences. I personally always took the view that, if you look at the case of should a Christian hotel owner have the right to exclude a gay couple from a hotel, I took the view that if it's a question of somebody who's doing a B&B in their own home, that individual should have the right to decide who does and who doesn't come into their own home. If they are running a hotel on the high street, I really don't think that it is right in this day and age that a gay couple should walk into a hotel and be turned away because they are a gay couple, and I think that is where the dividing line comes."

Now off with his head!