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