Quote of the day
“Whatever the merits of the Brand-Ross joke, or the judgment of the BBC editors, the last thing we want is comedy content being decided by Gordon Brown or Jeremy Hunt”
- Dr Evan Harris, Lib Dem MP
17 Comments
Witanagemot Blogs
Indeed. People should be allowed to vote with their feet. Unfortunately, as long as the licence fee continues to be compulsory, this is not the case at the moment.
The irony, of course, is that the granddaughter in question is not some innocent shrinking violet. She takes her clothes off for money in the ‘Satanic Sluts’ and, unsurprisingly, had slept with Brand…
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Georgina+Baillie&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a
But black & white, good and evil, cut and dried is a much easier story to tell…
Absolutely. We’d be limited to stuff like:
How do you ruin a party?
Make Gordon Brown the leader.
What’s brown and makes a mess of everything?
The Prime Minister.
Robert Mugabe is set to be re-elected unopposed as leader of Zimbabwe. Gordon Brown has rung him up for advice.
The 7 Dwarves are in a cave when it suddenly collapses. Snow White is worried for their lives,until she hears a voice from inside the cave saying “I think Gordon Brown is a great Prime Minister”.
She says,”Thank heavens,at least Dopey’s all right!”
(I’ll get my coat…)
“The irony, of course, is that the granddaughter in question is not some innocent shrinking violet. She takes her clothes off for money in the ‘Satanic Sluts’…”
A lot of the people complaining haven’t heard the broadcast (I never listen to this infantile pair) and are simply being whipped up by the media. I doubt many of them have even heard of this woman.
Come to think of it, a lot of them probably haven’t heard of Brand or Ross!
My two cents worth: why would anyone want to sleep with Russell Brand EVER, and people seem to have forgotten that the original broadcast prompted just two – yes, two – complaints from the entire UK population.
I fail to see what the woman has to do with this whole sorry incident. Phoning up a grandfather (even one as well known as Sachs) and mouthing obscenities down the phone about having sex with his grand daughter does not strike me as being in the least comedic. Ross and brand deserve everything they’re getting and hopefully the BBC will take a little more care over just what is broadcast in the name of comedy.
Good point – the fate of the producers who let this pre-recorded show onto the air does not seem to have been resolved….
I don’t think we want to live in a country where there’s state-sanctioned entertainment. Which is what we’ll get if the politicians are allowed to decide what is and isn’t acceptable for a broadcaster to show on a case-by-case basis.
There’s loads of blame to go round but ultimately this is an issue of subjective taste and while the beeb should perhaps have come to another decision on broadcasting, I’d not want to appoint anyone, not even myself, to rule on what is and isn’t fit for transmission.
TWO HYDROGENWEIGHT ENTERTAINERS
Radio 2 or number 2, take your prick; Ross and Brand are overpaid, state subsidised hankerers; wannabee indivdiuals of an oxygen/profligate ilk, who I used to ruthlessly mock as a young rebel, and still do as an elder rebellious statement-man. Give me airwave Osmium material: film critic Barry Norman and comedian Tony Hancock any day.
Shaun, eloquently put. For the state to decide what does and does not get broadcast is dangerous territory. In my opinion the outrage would have been a lot less if it had been a private, not taxpayer-funded organisation because people think the BBC should always reflect public opinion – which probably stifles broadcasting in many instances.
Paul, I don’t listen to or watch anything that either of the two of them do because I consider them both to be average presenters and verging on annoying the whole time.
This girl is entitled to her own private life. I do things I wouldn’t like my granddad to know about, I wouldn’t want some talentless comedian phoning him & telling him about it.
If she enjoys being a Satanic Slut, she can be one with my blessing. Who cares, apart from Mail readers?
I have quite liked Russell Brand in a vaguely amusing, often surprisingly literate, 19th C Libertine throwback. Ross I can take or leave, tbh.
That said, and by commenting repeatedly on it, I’m as guilty as the next man, you do all realise that this is a monster manufactured distraction from the Economic/Tax stories? I mean, the commenters on this blog are reasonably clued-up people and yet there’s twice as many remarks on what two ‘entertainers’ said to another ‘entertainer’ about his stripper granddaughter. So its clearly a distraction.
You can tell its manufactured as it got exactly 2 complaints following broadcast. The other 27,000 complaints arrived after the Daily Mail kicked off…
LFAT
Ross and Brand have turned look at me/mediocrity into a fine art: Will you remember them tomorrow? They are both grossly over-rated and overpaid; which would not bother me but the fact is, that the licence payer is picking up the tab. I find this extremely annoying!
I think George Osborne and Brand/Ross have all suffered from the repetitive nature of the financial crisis in the news, but Brand/Ross have certainly overstepped the boundaries far more than Osborne did!
Paul, I hear you. ITV and Channel 4 can pay their presenters whatever they like, couldn’t care less, but the BBC cannot operate like this and expect to be bankrolled by the taxpayer.
LOL I’m not sure the state could better spend Ross’s £18m (£6m/year). Frankly I’d rather see him have it than have to endure initiatives like Local Authority Webcasting (such as this one – http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=barnet+council&search_type=&aq=-1&oq=) or another recycling propaganda dirge. Under those circumstances, Ross can have it. Its not like they’d tax us any less…
As I read somewhere, it is a bit rich of Brown to comment when he just reappointed a proven liar and twice disgraced politician.
I would have also thought that he would have more important matters to deal with at present. Not that he would make them any better mind you.
But we do regulate broadcast content. It’s why we require impartiality, have a watershed and don’t broadcast porn. We have a right to with the BBC as we pay the licence fee.
The issue is not the fact that this was broadcast. The issue is the behaviour of Ross and Brand, and it doesn’t make any real difference whether or not they had a mike in front of them when they did it.