Many people ask us how we manage without UK television. Well, from what I read about some of the programmes recently, I'd say we were probably better off without it.
The scandal about Strictly Come Dancing and the accusation of racist voting was bad enough but the latest scandal involving Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand on Brands radio show makes that pale into insignificance.
Pam and I both like humour and enjoy a joke but not when it is blatantly at someone else's expense. Sad to say, it seems the vogue these days is for TV and radio personalities to specialise in this sort of humour. Chris Moyles, Ricky Gervais et al - to us they are just not funny.
Peter Kay - now he is funny. He might make jokes about his gran but they are light hearted. Kay proves that it is not necessary to be crude and offensive to make people laugh.
It seems we are not alone in our thinking; 27,000 members of the public have complained about the broadcasting of the phone conversations Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand made to Andrew Sachs' answer phone.
I understand that Brand has resigned and that Ross' shows have been cancelled but that is only a partial resolution to the problem. Clearly the BBC regret allowing the programme to be broadcast and are considering what steps they should take to regain viewer confidence.
The trustees are convening an emergency meeting today to hear the results of a BBC investigation into how the calls came to be broadcast. Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, is also conducting a separate inquiry.
Let's hope that the result of their deliberations is a tightening up of regulations at the Corporation. In the meantime, Pam and I will continue to enjoy our Digital + free of this sort of vulgarity and cheap humour.
1 comment:
This has story has had frightening amounts of publicity - certainly far more than it deserved - and yet it still strikes me that lots of people haven't really considered the bigger picture. There's certainly more to it than meets the eye.
We're talking about TV, but of course this happened on radio. 27,000 members of the public have complained, but only after four or five days. The people who actually listened to the show complained in the huge numbers of TWO!
Jonathan Ross was an idiot for saying "Russell f****d your grand daughter", but it wasn't completely random. He DID. That doesn't make it appropriate of course. A lot of people also gloss over the fact that she's in a group called "The Satanic Sluts". She's no blushing English Rose!
Perhaps the biggest crime to me is that because of this idiotic prank two of the radio stations that I consider to be the finest two radio stations in the world (BBC Radios 2 and 6) have now lost their Controller. This is ultimately a huge loss to the licence payer. A damn shame.
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