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Michael Burleigh
Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross
Tuesday 28th October 2008
I don't know about commenters on this blog, but I resent the use of the compulsory license poll tax to pay huge sums for these two to behave in the most asinine manner. Are they simply monsters who the bosses of the BBC are afraid of, or worse, do their antics reflect the mindset of BBC management? I don't listen to BBC Radio 2, but I'd be interested in hearing from those who do.
2:25 pm
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COMMENTS
Will
October 28th, 2008
4:10 PM
4:10 PM
I don't know the full story, but it seems like another example of the "nastification" of the public airways. Didn't the broadsheets have some coverage of increasingly prevalent foul language on television. Most television in the US pretty crass, even without the familiar four letter words. I'm no prude by any means, but the vulgarity is off-putting. Gresham's Law kicks in because the audience for better programing just doesn't watch, so there's more pressure to promote dreck and get a mass audience.
elberry
October 28th, 2008
9:10 PM
9:10 PM
The worst thing is neither will be sacked, let alone beaten and whipped and spat on by scurvy urchins, as they deserve. The only thing their bosses fear is indifference. If everyone just shrugged and stopped watching, they would be fired; but 10,000 complaints is good publicity for these wretches. You can bet Brand and Ross are chuckling and rubbing their hairy palms together with glee at this furore - it will no doubt boost their figures. The sociopathic indifference of Brand is particularly striking - he really seems to have something wrong with him.
mburleigh
October 29th, 2008
11:10 AM
11:10 AM
18500 people have so far complained Will. Last night in reporting the story, the BBC main news at 10 insinuated, by asking two different live radio audiences to comment, that anyone over 60 disliked the programme, while those under 30 loved it. This was so dishonest it beggars belief. Unfortunately the complaints line was so jammed that we couldn't even register a protest. Interesting too how it has taken ten days for the BBC to even start to respond to public outrage- as someone said they should have investigated the matter in about 45 minutes. What is there to be 'fairminded' about when two scumbags leave abusive messages on an old man's answering machine?
Recusant
October 29th, 2008
1:10 PM
1:10 PM
To add fuel to the fire Brand defended the call on air by asking what was more offensive, the Daily Mail's support for Mosley's Blackshirts seventy-odd years back, or his call? Seventy year old tu quoques, Lord save us.
elberry
October 29th, 2008
1:10 PM
1:10 PM
It seems to me that were there any divine justice in the world, this peculiar pair should be struck by lightning, or - at least - run over or beaten on the street or eaten by wild dogs or hungry chavs, or sucked into a rogue combine harvester and shred into a billion pieces, or perhaps simply thrashed by a passing gentleman, or they could fall into some kind of meat-rendering machine and be turned into burgers and served up to the BBC, or hanged from a tree and then stabbed with a speark, something like that, that would be good, will keep my fingers crossed for suitable divine retribution.
mburleigh
October 29th, 2008
3:10 PM
3:10 PM
Absolutely Elberry- sociopathic indeed. And hairy hands too. The latest is that they have been suspended pending an inquiry. We'll see. The Tory response has been typically timid. Instead of talking about how coarse British culture has become.
Vernon Howell
October 29th, 2008
4:10 PM
4:10 PM
Doesn't AA Gill have a good term for the 'Tristrams' running the BBC- public school nihilists or something like that...? I once had dinner with a British TV production exec. He was about 12 years old.
elberry
October 30th, 2008
9:10 AM
9:10 AM
i was pondering this anew on the walk home last night, i think partly this affront's force is to do with its inadvertently symbolic nature: you have the utterly harmless, dopy, loveable Manuel from one of the greatest English comedies - from an age before nastiness & degradation became the norm - being trashed and abused by two representatives of modern Britain. Hard to think of a more quintessentially English (in the best sense) show than Faulty Towers - Dad's Army, perhaps, or Only Fools & Horses or Blackadder - and hard to think of two reprobates more in tune with the base times than Ross & Brand. There is a symbolic force under this, which is i think why people are so outraged, it's on a par with Mandelsson digging up Churchill's body for a spot of light necrophilia.
mburleigh
October 30th, 2008
10:10 AM
10:10 AM
Yes Vernon. Gill is very good on this. The airwaves are full of them- there's Tristram Hunt, son of a Labour peer, and some real jerk called Valentine Warner who oohs and ahhs over his dull food. My friend George Walden wrote a marvellous book called New Elites: A Career Among the Masses, which I urge you to read. Very pertinent to the public school boys producing televisual dross for the chavs. Whoops, John Prescott says I shouldn't use such horrible terms.
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