Andrew Marr is still recovering from illness so another bloke was hosting his BBC 1 programme yesterday.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was among the guests, facing questions about the Stafford Hospital scandal.

You can watch the programme here and judge for yourself how he performed.

I thought it was a typical, polished, well rehearsed interview that will reinforce in the minds of the majority of the public all the things they don’t like about politicians.

Here he was, discussing people dying and he came across like he was selling car insurance.

Where was the anger? The disgust? The empathy and passion? It was nowhere and the immediate conclusion the viewer draws is that it’s not there because Hunt doesn’t feel it. He’s so removed and out of touch, so caught up in the nuts and bolts of being a politician that he doesn’t care.

I overheard a woman in the Co-op talking about a news report she’d seen on the issue and she seemed more upset about it than the guy who runs the government department responsible for it.

But of course, Jeremy Hunt isn’t directly responsible for what went on. It’s not his place to weed out whoever’s responsible, he has to look at the NHS as a whole, make sure systems run as smoothly as possible and all these other very important administrative type things.

And that’s basically what he said in the interview.

And that’s why people don’t like politicians.

Because it comes across like they couldn’t give a stuff.

In situations like these politicians need to throw away the clever answers and interview technique and start responding like human beings.