One certainly doesn't have to be a Daily Mail reader to agree with their view of those answaphone messages. The 'humour' the two served up was of the sort that would appeal only to the sort of morons so lacking in decency that they would find entertainment in watching a YouTube clip of a man urinating on a dying woman.
As it happens, I'm someone who has enjoyed JR's Saturday morning radio show over several years, but hopefully no more. The BBC, equally at fault over all this, have been shamefully slow in confronting their misjudgement; hence thankfully the sheer scale of the public anger. Hopefully when Ross departs (as he surely will) the notion that any entertainer justifies an £18 million contract will go with him.
Over on 'Comment is Free', Jack Straw has been sharing his opinions. Yes, that Jack Straw. The one who resigned so promptly as soon as his "cynical premeditated" statements about WMD in Iraq were shown to be just that. I'm afraid Jonathan Ross is not the only public figure who should "no longer be paid a penny by the rest of us."
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2 comments:
1. There is a great tradition in this country of free expression, iconoclasm, and general knocking of those in power. There is also a tradition, perhaps not so great, of bawdy humour.
2. Into none of the above categories did the antics of Ross and Brand fall. They weren't saying anything of public interest. They weren't exposing a public figure to deserved ridicule. And they certainly weren't being funny - there wasn't even a bad joke involved, rather no joke at all. All they did was make fun of a 78 year old man for no reason whatsoever. It wasn't even a knock knock joke. In fact they technically committed the crime of harassment.
3. The BBC took a disgracefully long time to respond and even now witters on about an "inquiry". Why the need for an inquiry? All they need is to establish who was the most senior editor who signed it off, and sack them. They might want to think twice about calling them "brilliant comedians" which rather obviously they are not. I did see that Ross is down to host a "Dad's army" special. Something tells me that the audience for that programme wouldn't have a great opinion of him.
I think that the BBC's failure even to recognise at the outset that an apology was required suggests that there are failing within that institution that go considerably higher than the producer concerned. I find this offensive in a way that the David Kelly affair never was, and feel that their editor-in-chief should carry the can if they are to recover their reputation
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