Jeremy Vine (2015)

100 Dermots sounds easier. Craziest question of the night award!

We may be entering new territory - where, for example, a promise like the LibDems' "we will scrap tuition fees" simply becomes impossible to make. Politics will move away from what was called "sofa-style" under Blair, where a small number of people go into number 10 then emerge and tell us what they are doing. It will move towards much more open bartering between parties. Promises will just be suggestions; everything will be tradeable.

I did trip on a virtual step into 10 Downing Street once. When there is a real object (a green doorstep) and it is overlaid by a virtual projection (a real doorstep that is not real) it can get very confusing. Sometimes I get home and wonder if my wife is actually just a graphic.

Well, we had a referendum on AV and the result seemed to be one gigantic raspberry to it.

Nooooooooooooooooo

I think it takes a couple of election cycles.
Cycle One: stand everywhere and lose lots of deposits.
Cycle Two: work out where you are strongest (with UKIP it seems to be coastal places like Grimsby) and focus ruthlessly on them.
Cycle Three: Make you case for equal status with the so-called 'main' parties, on the basis that 35% of voters now do not back them. We are in changing times. And it's very exciting.

We did a story today about a guy who built a boat with loft insulation and staples and had to be rescued by the RNLI. When he came on the air I asked him how he could set sail in a boat that cost nothing, and he said it didn't, it cost him £9, which was the silicone adhesive he used to glue it together. Utter madness.

Hugely. Someone said "all politics is local," and the system we have - first-past-the-post - emphasises the local, in that the most important thing is to concentrate your vote. The SNP and Plaid (in Wales) do this almost by definition; the LibDems are past masters at it; we are watching with interest to see if UKIP get say 15% but struggle to win seats, because their vote is spread rather than zoned.

Too "out there" - ?! What, you mean like too interesting or wild? The only items I have forcibly vetoed on Radio 2 are the ones where I feel there is no one who will speak with passion or no real disagreement - nothing at stake. I guess what I am saying is that my biggest fear is the item that is bland.
As to graphics - we are proud of our mistakes. When I wore a cowboy hat, we were a bit embarrassed for a while, and then we realised we had accidentally transmitted the most high-impact LibDem graphic in years. Not that I would do it again. Generally speaking I'm against doing anything that undermines the fundamental seriousness of the process. People really do want the graphic to be freighted with information - one fact at the very least!

In some debates I find it very hard. I always think a presenter can have values but not views. So I can think (or say) that I hate litter and people who litter ... I can't be angry about dirty hospitals, because that's political. You've asked the question I get asked more than any other (apart from one!): how do you stay neutral? And the answer is that it is a small price to pay for the best job in the BBC.
PS The one I get asked even more is: Who chooses the music on your show?

I don't know. It is truly incredible. The other day he told me the year Bach and Shostakovitch were born; and died. And that was just small talk.

The answers: (a) It is a TV tax isn't it? Is that such a bad thing? Doesn't it work? I had a satellite service provider for a while and they charged me £45 a month for less.
(b) It's against the law to evade it. That is just the way things are set up. Decriminalising it would have a serious knock-on for the BBC. If you want the BBC to close, just say so. It's quicker that way.

Yes. I have seen them live, and they played "Atmosphere."

Today, it is Party Girl from Armed Forces: "They say you're nothing but a party girl - just like a million more all over the world."

Last one first: the question-answerers sit beside each other on a bench in a different room.
Daphne is adorable. When she retired, my mum wrote her a lovely letter and Daphne wrote a long and charming letter back.
CJ is likeable, if you don't mind him walking around between shows stripped to the navel and covered in butter.
I was joking about the butter.

Thanks for this lovely question. When I pressed the CD button on Jan 6, 2003, and heard Thunder Road (that opening signature on the piano) - and heard the lyric "You're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't so young anymore ... " (My predecessor was Jimmy Young.)

Physical control - about 50%. They load a graphic and I fire it with a clicker that is converted from one of those car door opener things. It's all a bit less hi-tech than you might imagine.

I am keen not to; not even in my sleep; not even in conversation with my wife over a candlelit dinner; and especially not here.

I can't know - but I think it's here to stay. Partly because what is happening in Scotland feels so huge. And also because society is less tribal now. When did you last see a working men's club full of cigarette smoke; or a red-coated toff on horseback with a hunting trumpet? People almost never say "I've always voted [blank] because my dad/mum did... " so I get the feeling politics is being broken up and broken down, and it is scaring the pants off people who thought it would give them a job for life.

They are vetted for passion. Sanity does not come into it.

No, I don't think so. UKIP would argue that it took us too long to realise how high they were riding in the polls. But I think we judged it right: they won the European electionns after all.

Hi there Sam. POlling shows very high concerns about immigration and there has definitely been a reluctance to get into that area because of the fear of being accused of racism. UKIP seized that opportunity and have performed well as a result of that (and other factors). Interns - the BBC has a portal - check it out - and good luck.

I always think that the silliest items need to be approached with the most overwhelming level of seriousness.

It's not exaggerated! They were until recently scoring 15% in the polls. The system works against them somewhat, if we are looking at Westminster elections, because they actually need to come first in seats: in our system, to quote Yogi Berra, "second place is nowhere." Any UKIP person might worry that so much is invested in the undoubted charisma of Nigel Farage. I am not making a party-political comment when I say that he is one of the most effective political communicators British politics has ever seen. To that (short list) I might add Boris; Blair... and quite soon you start to struggle.

I have a view but - no, I mustn't. I really mustn't.

I wanted to do a graphic where I floated up in a balloon, drifted, and settled on a constituency. There were about 84 reasons why we couldn't. Part of the problem with an idea like that is that you are trying to render a lot of moving image in one go. And also, the graphic might not have meant anything: which is a rather more serious issue.

I feel bad saying it but I think in fifty years newspaper journalists will be obsolete like alchemists; child chimney sweeps; and knocker-uppers (the people who used a long stick to bang on bedroom windows in the days before alarm clocks). I worked for a newspaper and it was magical: in 1987 it had 85 editorial staff. Now it has 7.

Hi there - BringBackHanging??? Um, the non-dom announcement does feel like a proper election story: you're right. I am not sure that we will get any real gap opening up between Con and Lab between now and election day. Re the voting inequity, which is technical but I know as a geek you are ready for this - it's caused by Tory votes piling up in safe seats and Labour squeaking wins in smaller, urban seats on far fewer votes. In a peculiar way parts of Scotland function for Labour like the shires do for the Cons. The small advantage for Miliband is that it is twice as bad to lose a Labour seat in England to the Cons as it is to lose a Scottish seat where his main rival is not effectively contending. The worry for Labour is more a political one: the more they attune their message to Scots to stop the haemorrhage, the more the danger of alienating English voters. So they may have to write off seats in Scotland rather than fight for them.

Oh, complicated story, but we were doing 160 a year which was too much for one person. Now we do either 80 or 100 and the one person is me. He did a magnificent job establishing a show that has now run for 1,400 episodes.

Kane will win it. Love his attitude. And he is not Belgian, which helps. (Much as I love Eden).

I love Nowhere Fast myself.

A story that terrified me? When the London bombings happening in 2005 my wife was pregnant with our second, and I remember wondering if we needed to travel differently or whatever. It all felt very close to home. The health scares like bird flu and even Ebola are usually - I fear - the focus of quite painful overreactions, in my journalistic experience. Working as a foreign correspondent I did once get ambushed and nearly died: that scared me. A bullet literally whistled past my head, and I still have the tape of it.

I will be up! I expect the studio will be on air from 10pm till 6pm the following day. It will be the longest election night I've done.

Paedophilia has NOT been covered up in the BBC. For God's sake, when the Savile scandal emerged it hit the place like a firestorm. George Entwistle, a personal friend of mine, had been DG for about ten minutes and had to resign.