I have to, at this juncture, note my admiration for John Simpson. He’s currently dodging muck and bullets in Libya, and has done for in various places of conflict for many years. The things is that he’s the tallest, whitest bloke the BBC has, and they really like to send him to places where the BBC may not be welcome. He’s recently reported from Zimbabwe where the BBC is not welcome, and he stood out like a sore thumb. Why the BBC didn’t send someone less obvious is beyond me.

Yet, for some reason, he was never picked up and taken off by the authorities there. Right now, it seems that he’s doing stirling work in Libya. I hope he continues to do so for a long time to come.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Simpson_(journalist)

John Simpson is one of the BBC's greatest assets, along with David Attenborough.

That said, I also have a lot of respect for John Sergeant and Michael Crick.

I'd happily see him use Jeremy Bowen as a shield if things got hairy - that is one smug, biased tw@... Even when they would get him on the sofa for Breakfast the ego was hanging out of him

Saw the title of this thread and thought he'd been shot or something! Yes, he's doing good work out in Libya at the moment.

No - not been shot, but was seen shouting "keep your head down!" as the car he was in was driving away from Gadaffi's lot who were shooting at them.

He has a lot of respect in this house for his coverage over the years.

He was on The Andrew Marr Show (around 12 mins in):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... 3_03_2011/

Same for a number of BBC journalists though I cannot for the life of me think of a single ITV journalist. It might help if I actually watched ITV news.