Nick Robinson seems quite chuffed with himself, having managed to provoke fifty odd MPs into signing an EDM after his well deserved dig at the Speaker:

THE REPORTING OF MR NICK ROBINSON

25.02.2008

Kilfoyle, Peter

That this House deplores the innuendo of the blog of Nick Robinson, the BBC’s lobby correspondent; calls upon him to substantiate the imputations he makes in his blog concerning the Speaker and hon. Members; and also calls upon the BBC to publish a full, itemised account of the expenses of Mr Robinson, in the name of transparency and accountability of public funds.

Nick accepts that “If you ladle it out, you’ve got to take it, as the old saying goes.”

Well let Guido dish it out a little more to our favourite public service broadcaster. This Freedom of Information request has just been submitted to the BBC’s FoI unit.

Dear Sirs,

Please could you send me, by return as soon as possible, a full, itemised account of the expenses of Mr Nick Robinson, in the name of transparency and accountability of public funds.

Am particularly interested in the itemised receipts for Shepherds, Le Caprice and The Atrium restaurants.

There is considerable public interest in this as evidenced by the Early Day Motion 1037* signed by over 50 members of parliament.

Please acknowledge receipt by return.

Yours faithfully,

G. Fawkes

Although Guido is with Nick on this, it should be a bit of fun to see his wine choices. Before you ask, Guido spends nearly all his pocket money on booze, the rest is wasted…

UPDATE : Curly reckons Nick is beginning to sound like Guido. Say it ain’t so…

Even Nick Robinson is taking the piss out of the Bottler-in-Chief. He is asking readers of his blog for suggestions as to what he should ask Gordon at today’s press conference. He also explains why old Brown pants would rather face the press pack than the opposition.

The truth is that he would far rather do this at a news conference than in the bear-pit of Parliament or a round with the media’s toughest interviewers. It isn’t that difficult when you get to choose the questions (allowing you to say “the lady at the back with the headscarf” if the going gets tough and you fancy a detour into the Middle East) and you disallow follow-ups and when you stand up in the state rooms of Downing Street looking prime ministerial.

Is that “toughest interviewers” jibe a dig at Marr? Apparently Robbo only found out about the Marr audience with Gordon second hand. Brave Brown is not coming to the House first today (has he forgotten about “the new politics”) he is going to face the Lobby first. Revealing isn’t it that he would rather face the likes of Andrew Marr than MPs. Incidentally, Robbo asking his blog readers for help? He’ll be offering them T-shirts next…

Nick Robinson breathlessly informed us yesterday on his blog that “The BBC has learnt that over the past 24 hours the Labour Party has begun recruiting key staff to work on an election campaign.” Nick is a brilliant investigative reporter isn’t he? Guido read about that on Recess Monkey the day before, who read it in the Guardian.

Guido could be wrong, but something tells him Gordon is bluffing.

Well the live interview was definitely a mistake and against my better judgement, as was the in-the-shadows idea of the Newsnight editor, but nice to have Sir Michael White go to full-frontal-abuse.

His denial of knowing his friend Prescott was even 68 is contradicted here

Interviewing Prezza for the Guardian on the 10.05 out of King’s Cross yesterday I was startled, not for the first time, by his resillient energy. It was his 68th birthday, which makes him eight years older than me and a good deal more energetic. Why hasn’t he got any white hair, I found myself wondering? What’s his secret? Pauline’s cooking? Grecian 2000? Tracey? Croquet? A zeal for the public good?

Incidentally – want to clarify something immediately re Nick Robinson – that last line about Nick being the source, did not mean he was the source for the original much contested Guido “email” second system story. Nick has never been a source. We had a discussion re the Ruth Turner document after doing his interview. That was what the reference was to, pretty sure that came over all wrong, and genuinely apologise for any embarrassment caused to Nick. Good night.

Nick Robinson regrets speaking to Guido, well that may be, he probably won’t give Guido an interview again. Bovvered.