The furore over offensive phone calls made by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand to actor Andrew Sachs shows how society has forgotten how to behave itself, the Independent said in an editorial.
“Exactly what has happened to good manners and basic courtesy,” it asked on its leader page. “And isn’t it time they made a return?
The episode casts Britain in a “very shabby light” and raised the question: should a public service broadcaster employ such individuals, the paper added.
The incident was “ugly, cheap and nasty” and highlights a wider issue of falling standards in modern broadcasting, wrote John Harris in a column for the Guardian.
“Perhaps the spectral presence of Mary Whitehouse has hung around our discourse on broadcasting for too long,” he wrote. “Agreeing that too much TV is getting ever more coarse and idiotic doesn’t strike me as a sop to the authoritarian right.”
The Times used its august leader columns to discuss the incident under the headline “A Sorry Affair”, the same headline used by its sister paper The Sun in its “Sun Says” column.
“Some will say that humour that doesn’t offend isn’t humour,” the Times said. “Cutting humour is designed to draw blood. Lenny Bruce drew plenty. But there is a wide gulf between comedy and malice.”
The editors’ failure to delete the offending section of Brand’s pre-recorded show before it was broadcast “should mortify the BBC”, it added.
“SACK THEM!” screamed the front page headline in the Daily Mail.
“Even by the standards of this puerile, smutty pair, this was a disgusting and gratuitously cruel way to a treat 78-year-old Andrew Sachs,” the paper said in an editorial.
“Is there any reason why we should be expected to go on paying this vile man (Brand) - or the executives who judge his filth fit to broadcast?”
Trackback
13 comments so far
Sack the pair of them. Who but spotty teenagers find their rubbish funny, anyway?
This grubby little episode says everything we need to know about the BBC.
- Posted by PeterWill anyone really care if both these individuals are removed from the BBC? I dont think so. Sack them and set an example. However, the senior managers who reviewed this material prior to broadcasting should also be removed.
- Posted by PeterBet the BBC is relishing all the publicity. You can bet the only person to get blamed will be some middle ranking executive that no one’s ever heard of. Brand and Woss will continue to “earn” millions for their shows, their lavatory sense of humour and their gutter-level drivel. Worse, we’ll continue paying for it. The BBC doesn’t care what we think…they’ve only apologised because there’s concern that Ofcom may get involved - otherwise they couldn’t give a Woss.
- Posted by CitiboyThese are two experienced broadcasters who really should know better (listening to it they sound like overexcited school boys who got a bit carried away), however as it was a prerecorded show I feel ultimate responsibility should lie with the producers. Having said that the whole episode does feel like it has been disproportionately overblown - the Daily Mail must be rubbing their hands in glee.
- Posted by TimLike silly little boys with greasy hair and dirty fingernails, telling smutty jokes behind the bike shed at school.
Paying millions of pounds of our money for this rubbish at a time when people are losing their jobs and homes is disgusting. Whoever hired these clowns needs a Size 12 up the backside to remind them there is a real world outside the feather-bedded BBC.
- Posted by JasonTo the people who are saying the BBC doesn’t care what we think, why would the BBC even employee these two in the first place if there wasn’t a large audience who do watch them and enjoy them? They are giving people what they want…and while i can see why people may have been offended especially Andrew Sachs and his granddaughter, this whole thing has been blown well out of proportion.
Brand and Ross are funny guys, and they have apologised, now lets move on and find something else that’s wrong with ‘broken Britain’…a few prank calls are nothing compared to what else is going on.
- Posted by LukeWhoever thinks these two are funny, must have a warped sense of humour. Comedians you must be joking!Lavatorial talk such as theirs, and being unable to express themselves without resorting to the venacular when descibing anything just shows the depths we as a nation and the BBC have sunk to.Uneducated they must be and can stay in the gutter where they belong. Why waste taxpayers and licence payers money.Not for the first time as well have they vented their vulgarity on the media, its time they wre made an example of and got rid of. Lets have some decent humour. Not like this pair whose talk never rise above the waist!
- Posted by Trevor CherryGet rid of the two of them. The BBC does not need such characters.
- Posted by Keith BrownIs there any reason why we should be expected to go on paying these men (Ross Brand) - or the executives who judge his filth fit to broadcast?” SACK THEM ALL
- Posted by d jonesBILL
They have been sacked. Officially.
- Posted by vavanow one has returned to the sewer,hopefully the other will slither back and join him
- Posted by d jonesThe reason that there is so much public interest in this pair of not very important people is that, like the blog about “bling”, it highlights the mind-numbing WASTE of the past few years and the fact that people are turning against it as they feel the chill of economic reality.
Ludicrously expensive houses, restaurants, jewellery and “entertainers” are all a sign of a world awash with cheap money. In 12 months time, will even the cosily insulated BBC consider that ANYONE could be worth £6 million a year?
- Posted by Mike TJonathan Ross should now do the decent thing and resign as well. At least Russell Brand has had the decency to apologise and back this up with a resignation. This has gone some way in the eyes of many to restore his standing.
Neither are my personal taste in entertainment but they obviously entertain some and will, no doubt, find some way of making enough to live on!
- Posted by Richard