I noticed Greg Dyke’s recent book, Inside Story, being sold off in Waterstone’s for half price, only three months since it was first published. Amazon.co.uk have it for even less – a mere £8 – 60% off the list price!
A quick search of the web turns up an article by Andrew Donaldson in the South African Sunday Times that throws some light on the matter:
This was a year when the big hitters in the book industry paid vast sums for huge, often very self-important books which swiftly wound up in the remainder bins.
Penguin, for example, forked out £600,000 for Revolution Day, by the ‘handsome’ BBC Iraq reporter Rageh Omaar. It has sold just 16,000 copies — and, according to observers, recouping just 5% of the publishers’ advance.
HarperCollins doled out £600,000 for Shooting History, the memoirs of Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow, and £500,000 for Inside Story, the bitter confessional by former BBC director-general Greg Dyke. Snow’s book sold about 9,000 copies, while Dyke’s sales almost hit the 6,000 mark. Not good, to say the least.
It seems that British readers aren’t buying Greg (or Jon or Rageh).
Presumably this is because the book market in Britain is a free market – no one is compelled to buy a particular state-specified book just so they can read some other book – unlike their television viewing equivalents – forced to pay the BBC’s tellytax just to watch something else.
Check out the BBC have your say section regarding the Jerry Springer opera.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4154385.stm
Does anybody REALLY believe that those comments reflect the balance of feedback and opinion that they will have recieved?
An obvious fraud once again. Utterly corrupt and dishonest to the core.
Can anyone advise me please – maybe someone from the 5,999 BBC lefties who bought the Dyke book:
Is the paper absorbent?
The Beeb gets all self-righteous and patting itself on the back for being “courageous”, “edgy” and “daring” for broadcasting the Jerry Springer opera.
C’mon Beeb, do something REALLY courageous, edgy and daring — broadcast the anti-Islam film that got Theo Van Gogh slaughtered like a goat on the streets of Amsterdam!
Laughable.
Monkey, maybe you should send in a comment and it might get published. Although probably don’t use the name Monkey as they might think your taking the mickey.
One reason for the slant of the comments could be that the readership of the BBC website is a pretty different demographic from the majority of the BBC audience. Maybe not enough of the Christians are logging on.
Another reason of course could be that more people genuinely supported showing it than not – after all 1.7m watched and only 45,000 rang to complain.
I saw it and it was blasphemous, but also with a moral message. Anyway, would you seriously have wanted this pulled because of the blasphemy? What about the sikh play that was pulled – you didn’t agree with that being axed too did you? with that being cancelled and now this it’s like going back to the old days of Puritans banning plays.
and before some smart alec posts to say, aha, well if 1.7m watched it, that means 55m didn’t…. that is still pretty impressive ratings for an opera on BBC Two.
I have tried to send comments to the have your say page in the past, but have never ever gotten one published. I’m sure that other conservatives have had the same experience.
In contrast, they automatically publish the most illiterate, vulgar, over the top comments from lefties, even if they don’t leave their name or country. Surely it can’t be coincidence.
What we want Laura is consistency from the BBC. If they are going to show a controversial program mocking Christianity, then lets see a similar program mocking Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism or another religion, as well.
Conversely, if they won’t show a controversial program about those religions, then don’t show one about Christianity. It’s that simple.
According to Melanie Phillips (see her web site), the real target of Jerry Springer: the opera is television and the shallow, coarse social attitudes it both feeds on and nurtures. I haven’t seen Jerry Springer: the Opera (life’s too short) but I’d be interested to know whether anyone who has formed a similar opinion. Either way it was quite wrong of Christian groups to behave so aggresively. They have, as Melanie points out, shot themselves in the foot.
Actually the last round of interviews they ran with Dyke are hiliarious. It’s obviously just as it always was, all about him – fake working man speech pattern and all.
There’s self awareness, and then there’s SELF AWARENESS….
The Sikhs protested about the ‘play’ because it depicted scenes of murder and rape as occurring in a Sikh temple and NOT because it involved Sikhs committing such violence. The Sikh groups requested that the scenes in question even be shot in a Sikh community hall without causing gratuitous offence. I suspect that the playwright was being ‘courageous’, just like the BBC.
I hate to state the bleedin’ obvious, but as Laura misses the point by a mile, here goes…
A play at theatre is a private event. You have to buy a ticket based on what you as an individual consider worthy of viewing. It’s simply outrageous that an enraged mob should prevent anyone viewing something they had chosen to see. And that counts for those who actually want to wallow in Springer at the theatre.
The BBC, on the other hand is a… well you know the rest doncha? There’s no comparison.
I’d be intersted in a post on how Omar was puffed up by the BBC – thereby allowing him to get this massive fee.
He’s always struck me as not that sharp and (girls please confirm) hardly studly. So has anyone ever looked into how he got where he got the absurd epithet “scud stud” – more like crud scud to me.
I don’t think anyone here wanted to stop the broadcast of the Jerry Springer opera. What’s disgusting is the Beeb’s hypocritical double standards: continued abuse of Christianity while employing kid-glove treatment of all other religions, particularly the Beeb’s “teacher’s pet”, Islam.
What’s even more nauseating is that the Beeb congratulates itself for its defense of “free speech” by going ahead with the Jerry Springer show, when we all know it would censor even the slightest criticism of Islam at the drop of a hat. (We’ll never see the Beeb broadcast a scene with Muhammad in a diaper singing about being gay.)
Regarding the rough Christian protest behavior, I agree it’s inexcusable. However, the Christians know by now that taking the high road in the matter will simply result in continued abuse and ridicule for their religion. Unfortunately the Christians have found out that good behavior doesn’t pay, while bad behavior pays off very, very well.
These kinds
(cotinued)
These kinds of incidents will continue as long as the leftist cultural elite upholds the “some animals are more equal than others” principle.
several months ago I read that Omar was supposedly signed up to some commercial broadcaster , either here or the US. I was hoping he might go to the US so as to be spared his dreadful reporting( it’s no wonder he was the ‘only reporter’ in bagdad before saddam was removed!)but he’s still around – anyone know what happened? surely the pc bbc didn’t bribe him to stay on with even more of our money???
‘It seems that British readers aren’t buying Greg (or Jon or Rageh). Presumably this is because the book market in Britain is a free market – no one is compelled to buy a particular state-specified book just so they can read some other book – unlike their television viewing equivalents – forced to pay the BBC’s tellytax just to watch something else.’
Partly true. It’s also partly due to the fact that the British people are slowly waking up to the fact that the most distatseful people in their country are those that are hiding behind the walls of the unregulated State-financed BBC.
However, if the BBC is not privatised soon, the sheer weight of money that is allocated to it (2.8 billion pounds per annum; plus other dubious “loans”) will quickly put the British public back to sleep for good.
ken wrote:
“no one is compelled to buy a particular state-specified book just so they can read some other book – unlike their television viewing equivalents – forced to pay the BBC’s tellytax just to watch something else.”
Shhhh! Don’t give them any ideas. I can see it coming. In order to get the right to purchase the latest Harry Potter installment, you must buy this lovely BBC-produced book on how “anti-globlization” is the cure for all the world’s problems. . .
Who on earth would consider buying a book by that young fool Ragee ?