Despatch Box [SEP] original network
Despatch Box
Despatch Box was a late night political analysis television programme produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Two between 20 October 1998 and 20 December 2002. The programme was a replacement for the nightly political programme "The Midnight Hour", and like its predecessor, was initially presented by a team of single-presenter journalists, rotated nightly, consisting of Zeinab Badawi, Michael Dobbs, Andrew Neil and Steve Richards. The programme regularly gained an audience of more than 350,000 viewers. Following a change of format, it
current despatch boxes in the British House of Commons were gifts from New Zealand, presented after the House of Commons was rebuilt following World War II. They are made of puriri wood and are modelled on the Australian boxes, which are replicas of the original despatch boxes destroyed in World War II.
The box on the Government side contains holy books of various religions. The Opposition box contains a singed Bible. The Bible was resting on the centre table when a German bomb fell on the Commons chamber on 10 May 1941,