WHITBY LAUGHS OFF BELL DING DING

30-03-2007

Birmingham Council leader Mike Whitby has laughed off suggestions that he needed to be restrained during a heated exchange with a local journalist during Tuesday's Best of Broad Street awards.

As we reported yesterday (see the article here) there were suggestions that Whitby became over-excited about the prospect of a mayoral referendum during a discussion with the Birmingham Mail's David Bell.

Talking to The Stirrer, he laughed off the idea, insisting that he was still on good terms with Bell, the paper's local government correspondent.

He said: “I was with a group of people and went to speak with Jon Griffin [also of the Mail] and David Bell.

“The decibel level was so high that I had to get very close to make myself heard, and they had to get close to hear what I was saying.

“It was as simple as that. There was no shouting, no aggressive gestures. There's no truth whatsoever in the suggestion that I had to be restrained. In fact the only people who had to be restrained were the men who got close to the go go dancers."

Birmingham Mail editor Steve Dyson is also playing down the affair, posting a message on this site which says, “the reporter concerned described it as ‘nothing to write home about, nothing more than hot air'.”

Referring to suggestions that the Mail's campaign for a mayoral referendum was at the heart of the dispute, Dyson added: “If the Mail's campaign has been taken personally by senior councillors, then I'm afraid that is up to them, as nothing personal is intended.