Sunday Morning Live? Hardly worth getting up for

I was on Sunday Morning Live (BBC1) this morning.

Got up at 5.00, drove myself to London (they offered to send a car but I prefer my own company, especially at that time of the morning) and arrived ridiculously early so I had to find a coffee shop to kill the best part of an hour.

Even 8.45, which is when guests were asked to arrive, was unnecessarily early, as the producer himself admitted when he came to the green room to welcome us to the programme which is broadcast live from 10.00am.

"I don't know why we ask people to come so early," he said.

I do. It's to stop the production team having kittens if someone arrives with minutes to spare or not at all and they have to alter the schedule at the very last moment.

From the guests' point of view it's a pain because there is a lot of sitting around, especially if you're on the last of three panels, as I was. More of that in a minute.

Other guests on today's programme included journalists Peter Hitchens and Yasmin Ali Brown, and Nigel Evans MP who were all taking part in a discussion about the social media abuse of MPs.

That was the second topic of the day. The first was about the legalisation of drugs and Hitchens was on that panel as well. In fact, he dominated it so much he got heckled (off air) by several guests in the green room.

I didn't speak to Hitchens or Ali Brown but I did speak to Nigel Evans. Nigel has attended several Forest events (and is speaking at our Conservative conference fringe event in Manchester on October 3) so I thought he might recognise me.

He didn't. Nevertheless we had an amiable chat and he made a couple of points I had every intention of using when, finally, I got on air to debate the programme's third and final topic - 'Should medical treatment be delayed for patients with unhealthy lifestyles?'

The full panel was Chris Snowdon's favourite cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra, mental health campaigner Natasha Devon and broadcaster Rosy Millard.

By now the programme was running late so there was no time for any debate worthy of the name. Instead the presenter went to Millard, Devon, Malhotra and me (in that order) with almost no interaction between panellists.

I did take issue with something Millard had said but there was little time to say a whole lot more before there was a break to read out some viewers' comments following which the presenter returned to Malhotra. Finally, with seconds remaining, Natasha Devon was given the last word.

It all felt extremely rushed. The official explanation: "We were squeezed for time."

My reaction? Hardly worth getting up for.

Update: You can watch the programme on BBC iPlayer here. The topic is introduced at 45:20 and the discussion starts at 45:50.

The item is longer (about eight minutes) than it felt, although I still wouldn't classify it as a 'debate' or 'conversation', which is what we were promised.