In this week's edition of his BBC Radio 4 broadcast, the one man able to tame Tina Beastie Brown, Sir Harold Evans, boldly went where every other journalist has gone before: irrelevancy. In a week full of American headlines surely worthy of dissection for his British audience, Evans instead opted to recount a tale about the educational Edison Project which, as many of his recollections do, centers around a Hamptons get-together. After the jump, Henry the Intern reports on the ho and the hum.

Despite the overflow of news crying out for analysis, Harold used his ten-minute BBC Radio 4 commentary to share a lackluster story with no news value. A true evergreen concept, for you journalism folks.

The topic was an "odd couple" of innovators: Chris Whittle and Benno Schmidt, the co-founders of the Edison Project, a private firm that runs public schools. Why does Harry care? Because he sees the partnership as a classic story of the American entrepreneurial spirit, complete with a happy ending. And because in 1991, he and Tina "happened to be invited" to a Hamptons barbecue where Whittle "was on the griddle." Harold credited Whittle, "a cheerfully ebullient man in a jaunty bow tie," with saving Esquire magazine and, later with Schmidt, for boosting test scores at failing schools.

At the Hamptons barbecue, Whittle had public school on his mind. The "ideas sounded so off the wall," said Harry. "Double the pay of teachers and principals. Pay according to merit and results not years. Insist on standards. Invest in research on just how children learn. Extend the short school year designed for an agrarian society. Lengthen the school day." Whittle convinced Benno Schmidt, then president of Yale, to join him in establishing the Edison Project with those prerequisites.

Whittle and Schmidt have "survived the jeers that the inert always inflict on the innovative and they've improved the lives of thousands of children," Harold said. The lesson therefore, is that the American spirit triumphs, especially with an incidental intervention from Harry and Tina.