Good morning! Today we’re talking about vox pops. For some reason, we at the BBC appear to be hellbent on cramming them into every single one of our news items about Brexit. But are they a worthwhile use of our viewers’ time and money? Or are they just a load of lazy old filler?

I went out on to the streets of Britain, to ask the public what they thought.

“I’m sick of the BBC’s obsession with vox pops,” said Barry Stereotype, 53, a market stall holder in Stoke-on-Trent. “They never tell you anything interesting or insightful about Brexit or the political process. It’s always just an endless succession of bored-looking members of the public saying, ‘They should just get on with it.’ The BBC’s job is to report actual news. They should just get on with it.”

“These vox pops on the TV are always so tedious and predictable,” said Gladys Madeupname, 82, a pensioner in Sunderland. “Here’s an idea for the BBC: don’t bother broadcasting a vox pop unless it actually seems to indicate a newsworthy change in public opinion. If everyone in Remain-voting Edinburgh tells you they’re now gagging for a no-deal Brexit, or the entire population of Leave-voting Essex is strolling through Basildon town centre whistling Ode to Joy and wearing a Jean-Claude Juncker mask, then fine, show us. But otherwise: stop wasting our time.”

“I’ll tell you what annoys me about vox pops,” said Ted Gruff, 76, an ex-miner in a working men’s club in Mansfield. “They all seem designed to perpetuate this narrative that every single one of the 17.4million people who voted Leave is working-class, and lives in a desolate ‘left-behind’ town in the north of England or the Midlands. But actually there are loads of Leave voters who are well-off, middle-class southerners. Then again, I suppose the ‘left-behind’ narrative is quite useful, for certain politicians, because it helps them argue that opposing Brexit is snobbish and cruel. If you think Brexit’s a bad idea, you must be a wealthy metropolitan elitist trying to trample the dreams of the poor, and so on. Curiously enough, the politicians who make this argument always seem to be ones who had never previously shown even the faintest concern for the poor, and in fact have a lengthy track record of making them poorer.”

“What depresses me most about vox pops is the level of ignorance they expose,” said Linda Imaginary, 41, a shopper in Boston, Lincolnshire. “There was a terrible one on the Today programme the other morning. They asked this silly old duffer what the Government should do about Brexit, and he clearly didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. David Davis, I think his name was.”