Today is getting Rowan Williams, Yoko Ono and a couple of other people in, to ‘edit’ the programme over the festive period. Well, it beats paying overtime.

The BBC is good with somebodies, but it doesn’t do as well with nobodies. It’s great at providing a platform for people who already have a platform, like newspaper columnists or celebrities. It’s even good at providing a platform for people like the Archbishop of Canterbury, who have a chain of pulpits. But the rest of us?

This year some listeners will be allowed to play at the same game as the celebs. But a group of them will get to edit one programme. Not exactly a balance of opportunity.

Imagine an edition of Question Time where the audience consists of panellists, and the panellists are people who actually contribute to running life in the locality that the programme is broadcasting from. It might actually help sustain civil society, instead of parading the same media village people round the country.

And what a nice change if – for once – people on the outside were allowed to be on the inside.