So, it must have been an interesting week to be a fly on the wall of the BBC.
Chatshow presenter Jonathan Ross, a guest on unsuccessful wannabee-libertine (but successful self-publicising idiot) Russell Brand's radio show, decide they should both ring up veteran actor Andrew Sachs when he doesn't do a scheduled interview and leave a message on his answer-phone. This turns into the kind of rant/message that includes the men giggling over how Brand may have 'fucked Sachs' grand-daughter' on a previous occasion and how Sachs now might want to kill himself. Then then decide to leave another message which again dissolves into offensive farce. So far the Beeb has received around 27,000 complaints - though to be fair, many generated by tabloid The Daily Mail's self-serving headline 'shame' campaign rather than the initial audience for the radio show.
Ross can be a bit of a prat and pureile on his own show, but would usually know better. Brand is a talentless idiot who simply likes to shock (for my American readers, he's the British guy in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the 'comic' called your outgoing President a 'cowboy retard' at the recent MTV Music Awards). Brand pranced around for a few days giving non-apology apologies and has now 'decided' to leave his job at the BBC. Quite why he had a job to begin with is bizarre but it's quite right that he takes a large chuck of the blame alongside Ross and especially the producer who ALLOWED the show to be broadcast despite it being pre-recorded and Sachs making a formal complaint and NOT giving permission. Ross remains in his job, but suspended. It was shameful 'entertainment' and shows what people can do when they think they're invincible and unaccountable. Thankfully the BBC has belatedly done something about it, but should have done better.
In less salacious but more interesting news, David Tennant has confirmed he's stepping down as Doctor Who after the 2009 specials. A new actor will assume the mantle in the full 2010 season. Tennant will be a bloody tough act to follow, but new show-runner Stephen Moffatt looks like he knows what he's doing. Who will be cast? Exactly. I'm sure they'll get it right.
Wait. Russell Brand resigns from his day job on the same day that they announce there'll be a new Doctor? Ye Gods. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Well, that seems a little harsh on Brand, as I think he's talented, eloquent and different, and a lot of his comedy is quite self-deprecating and astute in its way. I can see how he might be polarising, but, for me, he always fell into a curious 'I should hate you, but I don't' camp.
What they did was obviously wrong, and that's that. Nobody comes out of it covered in glory, though. Brand resigned, which is at least something. The BBC haven't sacked Ross, simply because he brings in too many viewers, and docking him three months pay is a drop of piss in the license-payer's ocean. The girl in question, who actually had slept with Brand, has now sold her story to The Sun. The newspapers have printed countless kiss-and-tell stories for family members of celebrities to read, and so have no moral high ground.
And everything important is ignored. The more complaints there are, in fact, the more depressing it is. In a world where Jacqui Smith still has a job and we can be detained for 28 days without trial, where the De Menezes shooting is second item on the news, where the lies about Iraq have been brushed over and where we'll all need ID cards in ten years - all of which cost the man on the street far more than Ross and Brand - I find it all a bit dispiriting.
Sachs, to be fair, comes out of it very well. I just wish the media - while condemning this terrible violation of the old man's privacy - would stop camping in his fucking driveway.
I'm firmly in the 'I should hate him and I do' camp. While I've heard the odd funny line etc, the majority of Brand's stuff seems to scream 'Look at me, I'm being crazy and cutting edge...' when I mostly feel he's being loud and merely saying something controversial to GET people to look at him.
It's as a more astute reporter commented yesterday: that there's a genuine art to humorous phone-mischief and yet there was nothing really clever about this one: it was just two high-paid presenters being rude because they thought they could get away with it.
I do agree there are MUCH more important things going on in the world and equally I made the same points as yourself to someone today (that the issue about the event/behaviour and the issue about the scale of the Daily Mail's 'Get the Beeb' vendetta are actually two different things entirely... and that NO-ONE comes out of this with well (except Andrew Sachs himself - a pretty class act).
The most telling thing is, of course, that it took the BBC over a week to decide (in their own words) that it was all clearly unacceptable and then bizarrely claim they'd intended to do something all along. Riiight. Now it looks as if it's simply a reaction/response to pressure, not to the actual rule-breaking.
However Sachs Snr. is satisfied, Brand is gone, Ross is heavily fined, Baby Sachs sells her story to the Sun (who run an ironically just-as-tactless headline about what they did during sex - which I'm sure isn't exactly protecting her family's name either) and someone at the BBC gets fired though they had no direct connection to the incident.
Must be a Thursday. Note to self: Madeline still missing, Diana a still dead.