Last Friday night, when Jonathan Ross usually fills the screens of BBC 1, I appeared on Sky News. I was asked to give my views on BBC Radio Two’s apology for “phonegate”. This is not the official term but every scandal seems to have a ‘gate’ added now!
I am, of course, referring to the offensive voicemail message left by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross on the answer-phone of Andrew Sachs. It is astounding that the two presenters insulted the 78 year old Sachs. He is a national treasure – famous for playing the Spanish Manuel in the legendary TV series Fawlty Towers.
Despite two senior BBC executives resigning, along with Brand’s resignation and Ross’s suspension, the BBC managed to make a hash of its apology to Sachs last Saturday. The initial apology, made on Saturday morning, mentioned Sachs and his granddaughter without directly referring to the hurt suffered by Sachs’s wife or daughter. Sachs had to ask for this to be corrected in time for the repeated apology scheduled later at 9pm.
The BBC has a reputation for quality comedy. Its past comedians include Morecambe and Wise, the Two Ronnies and Hancock – they laughed at themselves and we laughed with them. Ross and Brand differ with their sneering at others – they are not well known (until now) for joking at their own expense. This is where the BBC has crossed the line between comedy and crassness.
The incident has raised questions over the license fee, the pay of BBC executives and the wages of presenters like Ross – he reportedly earns £6 million per year. In the current economic climate, this is hard to swallow.
I hope that the BBC emerges from this serious embarrassment chastened and wiser.
While I find it difficult to disagree with most of Lord Taylor’s comments, the unbalanced reporting of the ‘salary’ that Ross irks me. The figure of £6 million/year is the fee paid to the production company. That money pays permanent staff and contractors (sound engineers, cameramen, electricians, makeup artists, roadies, set designers and stage builders. And guest fees. That money pays for his production costs for his radio and television shows.
Naturally Ross draws a salary from his production company and it may or may not be hefty, but I do wish the mainstream media reported the figure with honesty.
I don’t know how anyone can call Jonathan Ross a comedian. People may have different views on whether his output is entertaining or not, but it isn’t comedy. During this debate, someone said that taking pleasure from other people’s discomfort is part of human nature – after all they used to have public executions as entertainment. Maybe, but they didn’t try to pass executions off as comedy.
Fawlty Towers showed a hotel owner being rude to his guests, but it was funny because he was portrayed as being incompetent, and a good example of how not to behave. Today, not only do so-called comedians have to be rude to real people, but young people who consider them role models then think it’s OK to behave like that. For me, the most shocking part of this whole affair is the way so many young listeners leaped to defend Ross and Brand, seeing absolutely nothing wrong with what they did.
More pathetic bandwagon jumping here again…
The worst outcome from this scenario will be if the BBC resorts to becoming a hideously dull ‘cardigan-and-slippers’ organisation where the likes of Ken Bruce and Alan Titchmarsh are given undue prominence.
Where will the risk-taking come from them then ?? Why not listen to the views of Gillian Reynolds, the radio critic for the Telegraph.
A woman with taste, class, great critical faculties and hardly one to be ‘yoof-obsessed’. Her opinion is rather more bright and circumspect.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/11/04/nosplit/bvtvgillian-reynolds-0411.xml
‘chastened and wiser’ ? do me a favour..
“The BBC has a reputation for quality comedy. ” Indeed it does.
Remember these ?
‘That Was The Week That Was’ of whom it was said by Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, BBC Director-General, ‘It was as a pillar of the Establishment that I yielded to the fascist hyena-like howls to take it off!'[1963]
BBC3, where way back in 1965 Kenneth Tynan was the first to use the f-word on television.
‘Til Death Us Do Part’ which was very controversial, contained lots of swearing, and indeed where there concern because some of the satire appeared to over the heads of the intended audience. [66/75]
More recently, ‘The Thick of It’ employed a swearing consultant, but this did not stop it winning several BAFTA awards.
I am not completely unsympathetic to the efforts of the Late Mary Whitehouse, over many a long year, to impose some standards on TV broadcasting, and MediaWatch does important work these days on the ‘age classification’ of video games which young children use.
But to pretend that the BBC in the Sixties and Seventies was some form of ‘golden period of innocence’ to which we would all like to return simply doesn’t reflect the view of every person watching TV.
I agree that people like Gordon Ramsay and ‘Big Brother’ are at the lower end of the quality spectrum – but one doesn’t have to watch these programmes and Auntie does offer some more thoughtful and highbrow alternatives as well.
If there’s one thing that this whole debacle proves, it’s that the government has moved from merely being unduly influenced every time the grotesques on Fleet Street concoct another outrage to what can only be described as wholesale colonisation.
It is indeed interesting that Lord Warwick was invited on to give his tutty views on Sky, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who has never been shy about expressing his distaste for the publicly funded competition. Murdoch, of course, also owns The Sun, which printed a picture of Sachs as Manuel alongside a picture of his granddaughter half-naked. Was Lord Warwick asked, on Sky, whether the two instances were comparable and whether The Sun should be similarly censured and subjected to the outraged clutching of hankies to bosoms? Of course not: the press is there to invent outrage, not to be subjected to it.
I do not hold that butter couldn’t melt in the BBC’s mouth, but I do believe that the correct response to this was to say, both to Ross and to the ghouls trying to make a tempest in a teapot out of this, “Do grow up you children.” Unfortunately, the need to harrumph and phnarr on TV to prove that we really do believe there’s a golden age that we must return to, good lord it’s all going to the dogs, wasn’t like this in my day, etc etc seems to trump any desire for genuine dignity in the halls of government power.
Incidentally, there’s nothing wrong with having a knowledge of comedic culture that stops with Morcambe and Wise and The Two Ronnies, but I think it says a lot more about the criticism that there is apparently no regard for anything made in the last 25 years. Would we be robbed of comedy like The Office, The Mighty Boosh or Little Britain simply because it might cross whatever arbitrary line the media wishes to declare crossed today? Or should we all, Lord Taylor of Warwick included, take this moment to have some sober reflection about our own national behaviour, and whether this kind of embarrassing tabloid pants-wetting and faux-nostalgic harrumphing is something that we should grow out of already?
Way to go McDuff !!
And, as if by magic, both Ross and Brand have been nominated for the National Comedy Awards !! I wonder if they will turn up…