"Order, order." Keith Vaz has yet to find a ceremony he doesn't like to stand on, and it's become a tradition for him to open every meeting of the home affairs select committee as if he were Speaker of the house.
Vaz has also yet to find a bandwagon he doesn't like to jump on. The investigation into Sir Cliff Richard's alleged sexual assault on an underaged boy in 1985 has barely begun, but Vaz has already decided to conduct his own into how the BBC had been apparently tipped off by police about the raid on the singer's Berkshire flat.
First to come before Vaz was David Crompton, the South Yorkshire chief constable, who was already having a spectacularly bad week following the report into the Rotherham child sex abuse scandal. Vaz was keen to make it a whole lot worse.
How had the South Yorkshire police come to do a sweetheart deal with the BBC to give them exclusive film rights to the raid? he asked. Um, er, well, it was like this, guv, Crompton said. There was this BBC geezer, I forget his name, and he phoned us up to say he knew all about the raid, that we were bang to rights so it would be best for us if we came quietly and let him send in the chopper. So we dun just that.
"That sounds like blackmail," exclaimed an aghast Vaz. "Blackmail is a very strong word," Crompton replied.
Vaz then went for the kill. Did the tipoff come from the South Yorkshire police? Definitely not. From the Metropolitan police? Definitely.
Why hadn't he questioned the head of the Met about the leak before rolling over to the BBC? Crompton looked at Vaz as if he were a fool. Didn't the chairman know that everyone in the Met was bent and you can't trust no one there?
Why hadn't South Yorkshire police gone straight to the BBC director general to get the corporation to drop the story? Vaz was on much stronger ground here as it's a tactic he's been known to use himself to kill investigations into his own affairs. Crompton shrugged. Dunno, mate. Never thought of it. "Perhaps I was a little naive," he conceded. "It is the opinion of this committee that your force lacks competence," Vaz replied. Dismissed.
Next up were the BBC director general, Lord Hall, head of BBC news, James Harding, and head of BBC news gathering, Jonathan Munro – aka the three monkeys. The trio walked into the committee room dressed in identical pale-blue standard BBC issue shirts and sat down. Hall put his hands over his eyes, Harding his hands over his ears and Munro covered his mouth. "I am not Mother Teresa," Vaz insisted. "I cannot absolve you of your sins." He paused at this point, inviting anyone in the room to contradict him on this.
To his mild irritation, no one did.
It turned out the BBC had no sins to absolve. The tipoff hadn't come from either the South Yorkshire police or the Met. It came via divine intervention.
And, of course the police only had to say the word and the BBC would drop any investigation.
By now the committee was turning into something of a love-in, with Hall and Vaz rolling on the floor competing to stroke one another's tummy. No such treats for Crompton. He's summoned to reappear before Vaz next week, about Rotherham.
