Brand & Ross: Harrumphing old farts get their way
Thursday, 30 October 2008
One of the most enlightening pieces of journalism re the Russell Brand/Jonathan Toss incident was when the BBC’s David Sillito solicited the views of people queuing to watch the filming of the Alan Titchmarsh Show and compared them with the views of people queuing to watch Never Mind the Buzzcocks. The former group (old people) were outraged; many of the latter (young people) couldn’t see what all the fuss was about (clips here).
The resignation of Brand and Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas, and the suspension of Ross on zero pay until January, shows the debate has moved beyond the issue about who said what to whom and how offensive it might have been. It’s morphed into a Daily Mail-led hate explosion in which the Alan Titchmarsh-loving moral majority lament the bloke-ish, foul-mouthed comedy of a few highly-paid BBC “faces” who represent the antithesis of everything they hold dear. (And yet the Mail’s decision to publish numerous photos of Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter Georgina Baillie in various states of undress entirely thwarts the paper’s position as a moral guardian.)
Whatever the problems with the unfunny, puerile, bullying phone “prank” might have been - and how it came to be aired - the Beeb’s capitulation to this mass of 30,000 brainwashed idiots - none of whom, let’s remember, actually heard the original broadcast - is depressing in the extreme.
The dead hand of Max Clifford in the affairs of Baillie (aka Voluptua from the Satanic Sluts - link almost certainly NSFW) adds another sordid angle. I notice she was complaining in a Sun interview yesterday about how Brand
embarrassed me by making a private relationship very public in the cruellest way imaginable.
And yet today, the same fuckwit’s comic publishes a kiss-and-tell in which Baillie reveals Brand is
a disappointment in the bedroom considering he has had so much practice.
Thanks for clearing that up, Voluptua. I hope your appearance on next year’s Celebrity Big Brother goes well.
Photo: BBC
No. 1 — October 30th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Has Ross come out and said anything yet?
No. 2 — October 31st, 2008 at 10:49 am
Great naughty keyword placement there. I’ve been utterly baffled by all of this at a time when we’re all facing an economy based on the value of dung in the coming year. Perhaps that’s exactly the reason for it - people need a bit of a silly-season relief from the doom and gloom.
The whole thing has become another excuse to chip away a little more at the BBC by its usual foes, and not just ideological ones.
The BBC’s preeminence in the online world makes it dangerous to everyone else in the UK with an online news presence, hence the Guardian’s frequent attacks on the Beeb.
Incidentally, the most telling response came from Andrew Sachs, who basically said although it wasn’t a very nice thing to do, shit happens and now that he’d received some very nice apologies that was that.
Anyway, Some good came out of it after all - Lesley Douglas is out.