A case of accountability fascism
Update 2 Brand Quits, more apologies, what next for Ross?
Update No Friday Night with Jonathan Ross this week!
It didn’t take long for the politicians to hop on board the trail blazed by the outraged tabloids. Old Labour publicity hog the Beast of Bolsover, to David Hanson, Justice Minister ( former charismatic NI minister) in the Commons this afternoon:
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab): Will the system that my right hon. Friend is outlining be comprehensive enough to find something useful for Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross to do in the event that they finish up inside?
Mr. Hanson: I am sure that we have some in-house entertainment that they can do. My hon. Friend makes a serious point. It is not for me to comment on the issues that were mentioned, but I feel that both Mr. Ross and Mr. Brand have to apologise for the broadcast. I do not think that it was appropriate or in keeping with broadcasting. I am not sure that it will result in prosecutions, but I feel that an apology is called for..
Then Cameron stuck his oar in and finally…. Ye–sss!…. the Big Yin hi’self
Its an old team sport to have a go at the BBC. This one is the biggest since Queengate, just as big as all those terrible rows during the Troubles, when at least something substantial was at issue, like the depiction of terrorists. The Mail takes the palm for a hypocritical feeding frenzy and the biggest picture of Georgina in S&M pose. Investigative work comes from the Mirror on Jonathan’s biggest boobs . . Included is the inevitable account of Russell Brand’s sex ‘n drugs addiction. All sense of proportion has been lost in a rush to escape the financial crisis and put on circulation. Her Majesty’s government and Her Majesty’s Press are competing to make prize fools of themselves .
It’s left to Media Guardian’s Monkey to offer a wry detached account of the press furore. Right now, £6 million a year Jonathan Ross is playing it shrewdly, with a personal visit to Andrew Sachs and a bunch of flowers. He has to clear the air before Friday night when I guess he’ll have to make a personal statement. Russell Brand seems to be playing it defiant. The thing to watch will be if some middle rank Beeb person is sacrificed. Nasty little episode that it is, it threatens to become a case of accountability fascism. And that’s a little bit serious.
Angus Deayton’s circumstances were vaguely similar, AFAIK.
No, Comrade Stalin, I am afraid your recollection is at fault. Deayton, unlike Ross and Brand, was not censured for any breach of broadcasting code. He had his salary as chairman of tv show Have I Got News for You halved as a punishment after allegations by a tabloid scandal-sheet about his private life which alluded to ‘coke-fuelled nights of passion’ with women alleged to be prostitutes. When the allegations were repeated just over a week later he was summarily sacked. Which punishment for being a victim of a witch-hunt by a scandal-sheet over one’s private off-air activities contrasts rather sharply with the belated reaction to the widely broadcast and transparent misdeeds of this sleazy duo.
Which just goes to show, CS, that, if you are intending to comment upon broadcasting matters, you really must try to stay in more.
Jone
spasticated pitchfork waving
Tsk tsk, such lack of PC awareness! Surely you mean ‘cerebral palsied pitchfork waving’ :^)
The ‘offended’ grand daughter in question may or may not be a ‘slapper’ but, as the ‘Georgina in S&M;pose’ link provided by Brian above confirms, she proudly proclaims herself to be a ‘satanic slut’ by profession. Not being a complete expert in matters of slappers and sluts I find it hard to detect the difference. But I am pretty clued up in reading between the lines and spotting the sly scams of celebs and Big Maggie’s nose on this one has sniffed out the same odour of pal-promotion that I detected. And I suspect that it was pressure from Brand that persuaded the compliant young producer that the segment was fit for broadcast.
The trouble now is that we wont’t be able to look at a publication for the next while without being slapped in the face by a photograph of the poor distressed dear showing us all just how much of a slut she really is.
Well there you go.
Brand resigns from BBC2.
Which puts Brian in a pickle, because of course as the BBC is infallible, how can they have accepted the resignation of someone who has done no wrong? It surely puts one in mind of Cordelia’s doctrinal teasing of Rex?
Harry
“Am I the only one here who objects to a thread which appears to dismiss the concerns about a dreadful taxpayer funded intrusion into the private family life of a man who literally escaped the Nazi Holocaust as “fascism”?
Is it Slugger policy that the term “fascism” is to be used to describe whatever annoys self important BBC (ex)employees?”
Savour this moment.
It may be the only time that I (almost) completely agree with you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Sachs
Much as I admire Brian and the extra ooomph he has brought to Slugger, I am with you on this one.
I said almost, c’mon you knew there would be a quibble. The BBC is not taxpayer funded as well you know. You can opt out of the licence fee, as long as you opt out of receiving any live television signals anywhere in the UK. A tall order I accept, and my previous post #9 indicates where I stand on the iniquity of jailing or criminalising poor young women just so two aging Lotharios (real or imagined) can ruminate over their conquests for the education of the nation.
An interesting footnote from the latest edition of Private Eye (number 1222) which reports that ” Jonathan Ross has consistently complained about the media invading his privacy and in recent years has repeatedly instructed his solicitors at Schillings to warn people about his and his family’s rights”. To say nothing about his shillings one might usefully add.
miss fitz:
Just out of curiousity, did you read the transcripts? No harm if you didnt, I am just interested in how people are reacting once they have actually read them
I’d seen about one-third of the transcript you posted, I had not seen the rest.
My opinion is that the remarks are crude and unacceptable, and I’d be very unhappy if someone said them to someone I knew. The part I hadn’t seen has some remarks I’d consider worse, but my overall perspective on the thing is the same.
However, I’ve not changed my opinion concerning anything that I’ve said on the thread up until now. What’s happened is that someone phoned up an old man and said unpleasant things about his granddaughter down the telephone. The reason we’re hearing about it is that the protagonists and the victim happen to be famous. The reaction is a storm in a teacup. The involvement of the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition is wholly disproportionate, as is this silly move to condemn the thing via a bill in the Commons. I’d have thought our politicians would have better things to do, especially right now, but then I was of course reminded that this matter is nothing to do with people really being outraged, but being seen to be outraged so that everyone can gasp and crow about how conscious they are and how concerned they are for Andrew Sachs.
When you have the spectacle of the tabloid press, newspapers which publish pictures of 15 year olds and run daily countdowns until their 16th birthdays, all condemning the moral outrage of this you get some feeling for how fake and blown-up this whole thing is. I’m far more concerned that there will be people of Andrew Sachs’ age who will die of hypothermia this winter because they could not afford fuel. In the scheme of things, a couple of idiots playing a stupid/moronic and ill-judged prank down the phone seems less significant.
I do hope, though, that Andrew Sachs recovers from the shock everyone believes he will have succombed to as a result of hearing that his granddaughter might actually sleep with other people. God forbid that anyone should dare to point out what he would never have guessed.
harry:
Am I the only one here who objects to a thread which appears to dismiss the concerns about a dreadful taxpayer funded intrusion into the private family life of a man who literally escaped the Nazi Holocaust as “fascism”?
From what I’ve read, Sachs just wants the whole thing to stop. Trust me, I don’t believe he wants to find himself idiolized by right wing moralists on the internet, or worse yet, find himself a pawn in a greater agenda to attack the BBC.
Rory:
Which just goes to show, CS, that, if you are intending to comment upon broadcasting matters, you really must try to stay in more.
I don’t agree, Rory. This is a witch-hunt and it was not at all belated. Granted, in this scenario they are being pursued over something they did while at work, whereas Deayton but not. But the faux-outrage characteristics with everyone voicing their own stupid opinion is all there.
So now Brand is gone and Ross won’t be far behind and we will no doubt see commercial tv channels positively falling over themselves to pay the astronomical sums that the BBC paid these two giants of the entertainment world for their superb talents.
Won’t we?
You know I understand I’ve been away from the UK for a while but have things changed so much in the past few years? I seem to recall back in the not so distant past tuning my car radio and in between the mind numbing drivel pumped out by half a hundred pop radio stations, output aimed at audiences with the attention span of a goldfish with Alzeimers, I’d come across a channel that had presenters who spoke intelligible English and played music that an adult could actually listen to, I remember driving on Sunday afternoons listening to a beautifully erudite gentleman who would play music and relate anecdotes by and about people like Dinah Washington, Count Baisie and Duke Ellington.
That radio channel was BBC Radio 2, please can someone explain to me what that boorish, foul mouthed, drug addled, puerile, barely articulate dolt Russel Brand was doing on Radio 2?
Yet there are still posters here who can’t see a society circling the toilet bowl when it is staring them in the face.
Comrade Stalin,
You’re being a tad disingenuous. The reason we’ve heard about this is because it was broadcast to two million people. Nor is it a storm in a teacup, if Brand and Ross were in any other form of employment and made such a call from the workplace it would be regarded as gross misconduct and they would have been dismissed.
And let’s not trivalise the incident by pretending it’s a case of Sach finding out his grand-daughter had sex. It was a string of abusive phone calls that humiliated an elderly man for “entertainment”.
Harry,
The BBC had to pay Ross a large sum in order to coax him away from the commercial stations. I have no doubt that, after waiting a while for the dust to settle, Ross will be back on a commercial station.
Ross’ huge salary at the BBC has always been controversial, so at least they won’t have that to worry about anymore.
Richard,
Yes, I’m aware it was broadcast to 2 million people, but I still don’t think that this requires the involvement of the Prime Minister, and I think it remains very obvious that people are milking this, including the granddaughter herself who obviously does not want peace and quiet either for herself or her grandfather, having sold her story to The Sun.
For christ’s sake, we’ve now got some guy from the Conservative party talking about how the government needs to uphold “moral standards”. This is nothing short of fucking scary, straight out of the Iris Robinson cookbook.
There is footage on the BBC website of Sachs, which you can watch here. My impression is very much of a man who, while offended, is somewhat bemused by the attention the whole thing has received and just wants to have a quiet life. Listen to him say that these guys are two performers just like him, and things went wrong, and he thinks they should “do better”. This contrasts markedly with the morally indignant howls of outrage coming from the usual rent-a-pundits calling for blood.
Both men are going to experience, likely temporary, interruption to their careers. I’m not going to be too sorry about that, I have no time for either of them, and I never even knew they had a radio show until this all came out. But I think that the “concern” here is largely being overblown, and that there are other agendas at work here.
Of course there are other agendas at work here. Not least your own, relentless and disingenuous state-television boosterism.
Definitely blown outta all proportion. Whatever about the mad fella Brand, but Ross is 47 and a married man with a few daughters! At his age ye’d think he’d have more sense.
I’ve come to this story a bit late, having largely ignored it. However, I have listened to the broadcast on youtube, and this is roughly what I think has happened.
Andrew Sachs was supposed to be on Ross & Brand’s radio show, but doesn’t show up.
They call him up – at one point before they get through they are suggesting that they could do the interview on the phone.
Brand is prattling on on the phone to the answer machine when Jonathan Ross shouts out “he xxxxed your granddaughter”.
This is true, and Sach’s was likely aware of it. If there had been a face-to-face interview, I have no doubt that Ross would have said something similar to his face. It is also likely that Andrew Sachs may have greater concerns about his granddaughter than an affair with Brand. Her member of a stripper group called “Satan’s Sluts” might come higher up the list of concerns.
Ross and Brand then continue to ring up the answerphone to apologise in assortedly ineffective ways.
After the show, Brand leaves Georgina a message that she should get rid of her grandfathers answerphone tape.
Later on, presumably after being “vetted” the show is broadcast. A total of 2 people complain. Yes, TWO.
Still later on, the Daily Mail & other papers launch a campaign. Thousands complain.
My opinion: Without the papers, no-one would have noticed or cared. Instead we get a load of cobblers about a poor grandfather being shocked by a foul and abusive message about his fair granddaughter. This is so far removed from the context as to be laughable.
The BBC should have stood up for their presenters and showed some balls against the braying of the moral-majority, whipped into a fervour by their rags.
Comrade Stalin,
I agree that that it isn’t for the Prime Minister to get involved and ditto on the faux outrage of some of the tabloids.
However regarding moral standards the Tory has a point. This is akin to someone bedding a girl then bragging to all and sundry she was easy and a slut. What’s worse is Sach’s and his grand-daughter have to pay for the privilege of national humiliation.
And the argument here is Brand and Ross should be made an exception of because of their celebrity status. As I said previously, in any other line of employment you would be dismissed if you made a string of abusive calls from work. As for calls for blood, Georginia Bailie has made one and has every right for it to be heeded. And considering the way she has been treated, I think she can be forgiven for telling us all how crap Brand was in bed.
The wider debate about the licence fee it is a perfectly valid one. After all we’re talking about how millions of pounds of tax payers money is being spent, and it’s difficult to justify a licence fee if it’s going to be spent on “humour” that any crass fifteen year old spide could come up with.
How dare anyone out there make fun of Brandy after all he’s been through?
All you people care about is readers and making money off of him. He’s a human! Leave Brandy!