Nick Robinson reveals moment he thought ‘furious’ prime minister was going to hit him

Nick Robinson on moment he thought Gordon Brown was going to 'hit me'Source: BBC Radio 4 Today

Transcript

00:00My problem is that, in the end, we're in this because we have to get the story right.

00:05And I feel that there's too many examples, not just in recent years, but going back a long time,

00:09of the lobby herd mentality spreading falsehoods and getting the story wrong.

00:14Do you remember Pittsburgh 2009?

00:17It's like when someone comes knocking on your door and says...

00:19Yes!

00:20So, in Pittsburgh 2009, there was a summit, the G20 summit, and it was the biggest event

00:25for Gordon Brown, probably in his premiership, because it was the moment where the financial

00:29system was going to be reformed. We got terribly excited about it, because this was Gordon

00:33leading from the front. And we took the lobby with us, Nick included, and I realised within

00:39a matter of minutes that the only story that the lobby really wanted to try and run with

00:44was whether Gordon Brown was going to have a bilateral or a brush-by with President Obama.

00:48I could never understand why, of all the things that were written about the G20,

00:53that was going to be the story that was going to be the legacy of the G20.

00:57It was the closest, by the way, I've ever come to a serving politician

01:01hitting me. I genuinely thought Gordon Brown was going to hit me at one stage, he was so furious.

01:06The key thing was that he ended up, I think I'm right in saying, in a kitchen,

01:10meeting Obama in a kitchen. I may have confused it with another summit, but The Sun brilliantly,

01:15I don't think it was up to you David, it was later, brilliantly called it Gordon's Kitchen Nightmare.