John Sergeant was a good political journalist and easily recognisable by all of the Westminster crowd. However since his retirement he's made a humiliating fool of himself in "Strictly Come Dancing" - we now know he cannot dance to save his life, stumbled through presenting "Have I got news for you" and now in his latest show he clearly demonstrates that he is NOT a photographer.

I was looking forward to following the series called "BRITAINS FIRST PHOTO ALBUM" on BBC2 in hi-definition as he traces the locations used by Francis Frith, the Victorian photographer who quickly realised that there was money to be made by touring the UK and snapping anything, everything and everybody. I have a couple of books of his photos in my collection. The hype over this series was that John would trace the location of selected shots and take modern equivalents. His first location in the first episode was at the Chelsea Hospital, home of The Chelsea Pensioners. The Frith shot has a line of a dozen old soldiers lined up in the courtyard with the statue of Charles II totally obscured by oak tree branches for what was described as Oak Apple Day 1898.

http://www.francisfrith.com/london/photos/chelsea-pensioners-on-oak-apple-day-c1898_l130320/

However John's version of the photo was taken without the adornment of oak tree branches revealing a stunning gold statue. BUT what did he do? He cenntred his photo on the pensioners and chopped the statue in half. His image looked totally wrong and unbalanced. I can't understand why he thought it was good. I gave up watching after that.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9133392/Britains-First-Photo-Album-BBC-Two-preview.html