says Mark Holland, in a piece on the new Channel 4 (non-BBC) output which takes a sideswipe at BBC ‘comedy’ (which on Radio Four means Jeremy Hardy, Mark Steel and a host of public-school lefties, one of whom must be called Sally for some reason).
These days we all know how to read between the lines, Pravda style, during any BBC news broadcasts we’re unlucky enough to catch. On the radio mostly. But it’s getting that way with the Radio Times too. One only has to spot a few tell tale keywords in the listings to know that a cavalcade of cobblers is looming onto the broadcasting horizon. ‘Satire’ is the big one for me. Take the BBC4’s The Late Edition;
Marcus Brigstocke hosts BBC FOUR’s studio audience comedy show, a riotous half hour of intelligent satire and debate with contributions from leading comedy writers. Strong language..
If Roy Castle were to rise from the dead in an effort to discover just how many George Bush is thick “jokes” it’s possible to squeeze into the back of 28 minutes of air time it just might be worth bothering to tune in. Otherwise forget it.
“The Now Show” has to be the worst of the lot. The reaction of the audience to any lame anti-American ‘joke’ (abuse would be the more correct term) is hysteria. I don’t mean mere applause, but screeching, yelling and roaring. For a British audience, that is hysteria. This isn’t merely in response to an abusive comment about George Bush either – all you have to do these days is say “Americans are thick and fat” and you’ll be guaranteed a second series. Pure, unadulterated ignorance, fear and hatred.
The News Quiz was OK when Barry Took hosted it, many years ago. Simon Hoggard has absolutely ruined it, and of course it is also now infested with virulent anti-Americanism.
The funniest programme is “I’m sorry I haven’t a clue”, which isn’t ‘satirical’ so naturally is actually funny. I’m sure there’s a BBC committee labouring away at this very moment to ensure that changes ASAP.
You must remember the intellectual snobbery of these BBC types.Do you know the most mortifying thing that can happen to one,is that he,or she,is at a party and an intelligent person genuinely thinks they`re thick.Its not money or power long life they crave,but recognition of their sophistication and cleverness.
Thats why they like sneering.Its a way to show their big brains are bigger and better than even the mightiest power on earth.It puts them in the club with the other big brains.When they lose an argument,its because they can see higher things than the pleb they were arguing with.The pleb may be taking a view from his lifes experience,but the big brains knows the philosophy and literature and Realpolitk,Guardian,Observer,Independant and higher values.
Where would they be without the BBC and Channel 4?
“The funniest programme is “I’m sorry I haven’t a clue”, which isn’t ‘satirical’ so naturally is actually funny. I’m sure there’s a BBC committee labouring away at this very moment to ensure that changes ASAP.”
Rob, I fear it’s already happened: ISIHAC is becoming more politicised, with regular swipes at the Americans, and Bush creeping in. Easy targets like the Tories and the Queen have long been staple fare. And that’s even when Jeremy Hardy isn’t the guest panellist.
Cheers.
Perhaps most pathetically BBC4’s “The Late Edition” is just a rip off of the American “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” which is shown on the wall to wall loony lefty More4.
BBC’s Gavin Hewitt in more Muslim/Tyrano sceptic than Michael Howard shock.
On News24’s “dateline London”, which gives the air to a collection of lefty (mostly foreign) journalists, a German woman journalist stated that Iran countered the Bush/Blair doctrine by being democratic. This echoed remarks made by Michael Howard last week on “The Daily Politics”.
Hewitt interjected that “some people” would question the level of democracy in Iran. Hewitt may have meant that the view was held by those nasty neo-cons, but we know that “some people”, “experts/critics say” is usually BBC code for its own view.
Correction – in aboce read Gavin Esler for Gavin Hewitt.
Left wing satire (is any other kind allowed ?)has become the the Establishment’s humour. Lefties control most of this country’s broadcasting and, increasingly,our institutions.
Where is the satire from a Right-wing perspective?Well,of course, you won’t see or hear it because that kind of satire would attack the Leftie,Guardian-reading classes;and we are not allowed to attack them with humour are we?Not in the MSM at least.
Btw,standby for Clive Anderson’s new radio show on R2.He will be inviting on politicians and comedians to”comment” on the week’s news.If you want predictability and outright leftwing smugness you know you don’t have to go far from this man and his guests.
Mark Steele a comedian? Some mistake surely? Just a mockney chin with a huge chip on it.
I was at a luncheon and beside me was a woman from the BBC, not a programme-maker, but she was shocked when I said I no longer watched any British TV – not BBC, not ITV, simply because I thought it was pitched at a basement level and I was several floors up in the elevator. She was genuinely shocked and tried to persuade me to watch some programmes, but I can honestly say I watch no BBC output and in fact no British TV output.
As for radio – Radio 4 was once the home of good comedy, but what was once good is available on CD and there is no point listening to live output. Just like Afternoon Theatre which once was superb and now exists only on CD or Cassette.
The once great Civilisation of the BBC has decayed and the grave-robbers and looters of cultural artefacts have taken over. They have smeared the walls with excrement and torn up anything they found lying around. The New Dark Ages is well entrenched in British Media as the kind of Prolekult Orwell warned of is used as part of the sovietisation of broadcast media
Mark Steel and Jeremy Hardy both were/are members of the Socialist Workers Party. What about Linda what’s-her-name and Toxic Toksvig? Tom Paulin still makes regular appearances so it would appear that, from the BBC’s list of approved ‘comedians’, at least two have advocated mass murder (Hardy and Paulin) whilst the others are supporters of a political system which has carried out mass murder.
Robin
‘You must remember the intellectual snobbery of these BBC types’.
Spot on.
Who can forget the nadir of broadcasting when, two days after 9/11, the BBC got into the gutter with Dimbledum’s Question Time, where an audience packed with Islamo-fascists howled and bayed at the US ambassador.
Following the wholly justifiable public outrage at this obscenity, bimbo breakfast TV propped up a ‘meeja correspondent’, a limp-wristed man called Nick Higham, who explained to us all that ‘Middle England had an uncomplicated view of such matters’. If anything exemplified the need for an independent complaints system for the BBC, with the power to discipline or dismiss staff, this surely was it.
Why do “left wing” comedians and the BBC not reconise Nazis when they see them?
Answer: Because they never look in the mirror.
If anyone sneered when I have called this lot Nazis or National Socalists before, should take note of Gordon Browns latest speach. The last refuse for any despotic goverment. Further evidence that our ruling elites really do know how stupid we are.
Rick
On the button
Its very hard to comment informatively about BBC content, when every minet of any of it makes your bood pressure shoot and your sanity, pride, selfconfidence, and sense of security plumet. However it is very possible to find enough crap on the BBC in 30 seconds, to write an entire essay. The BBC is well aware, and has been for quite a while that conservatives are furious with it and also dont watch it much. What is very very concerning is, WHY is it still getting worse? and WHY are the public NOW so stupid, they keep paying for it? Prisons not so bad , and you can always use your credit card to pay the fine.
I would like to see all Tory MPs and conservative commentaters with any BALLS (if there are any left) to tottaly and publicly BOYCOTT the BBC. For an indefinate period. Until a protest about the BBCs behavior has been properly and publicly reconised. If opposition politicians WORKED as hard as there constituence, they might just lead us to beleive that there is an alternative to the nazification of Europe. Instead of just waiting until the wheels full of the econemy. So they can help themselves to the Limos and better class tarts.
newkidontheblock
I hope those “stupid” middle Englanders still have an ” uncomplicated ” opinion on 6 million dead Jews or we are all in trouble.
Uncomplicated in BBC speak means Having the confidence to think you know the difference between right and wrong when you are obviously just plain wrong. As we know.
Toxic Toksvig
http://myweb.lsbu.ac.uk/~stafflag/sanditoksvig.html
She went to Girton College Cambridge University to study law and archaeology and anthropology. She also studied Muslim law as part of her extra studies. She hoped to become a human rights lawyer.
Peta, her partner of 12 years, provided three children conceived with the help of a syringe and a male friend. The children are Jessie (born 1989), Megan (born 1991), and Teddy (born 1995).
Sandi Toksvig acquired a new partner, Alice Arnold, an actor and reader of the BBC Radio 4 Shipping Forecast, and they moved into a converted barn in Surrey round the corner from Peta and the three children.
The Beeb censors pro-Bush commentary with alleged “technical difficulties”, from an account at Samizdata:
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/008477.html
This isn’t a new phenomenon; BBC television satire in the 1980s was a mixture of Ben Elton and Alexi Sayle and KYTV, which was a dig at commercial satellite television. They genuinely did think that the 1979 general election was the end of democracy in Britain; and I suppose at the time the left wing parties were too hopeless to be worth joking about.
And I can’t think of a great deal of television satire in general that lampoons the left wing. Citizen Smith, perhaps. Spitting Image on ITV seemed to be more neutral than the BBC’s version of satire, indeed I mostly remember the lampoons of the queen, who is of course politically neutral.
I am reading a book by Nick Mason, drummer with Pink Floyd. He says of the 1960s that “an increase in the number of grants available had made further education not only a good career move, but also an excellent way of putting off the evil day of having to go out and earn a real living. … The only real downside to all this was not to appear for another thirteen years. In the brave new, and very middle-class, alternative world, mainstream politics were rather neglected. By the time anyone realised it was too late. The wallflowers, who had been left out of all the fun in the Sixties, got their own back during the 1980s by gaining control of the country and vandalising the health service, education, libraries and any other cultural institutions they could get their hands on.”
That’s the BBC’s attitude in a nutshell, really; the government and media should be run by an elite, untainted by the dirt and impurity of money.
“I can’t think of a great deal of television satire in general that lampoons the left wing. Citizen Smith, perhaps”
Fun is poked at the dimness and hopelessness of the Tooting Popular Front, but the characters are all basically nice people. The jokes are not hostile to their views at all. Whereas with Alan B’Stard (who is quite funny, in small doses) the joke – that he is completely amoral – is a direct comment on his political position.
A good target for the BBC’s ‘satirists’ would be the 70-odd virgins promised to ‘martyrs’ for the RoP.
Another good one would be that ‘throwing stones at the devil’ business.
The infamous “Question Time” following the September 11th massacres – so bad that even I sat up and noticed the BBC bias. As I have, in fact, been doing ever since.
That programme also neatly summarises the BBC – a truly shocking broadcast, with a completely rigged audience chosen by a politically motivated editor, and they still haven’t changed. Not one inch.
Spot on Rob.
It was THAT broadcast that made me wake up and realise something was wrong with the BBC.
As you say, it was “a truly shocking broadcast”.
I had been told about it and, not having a TV, watched it via a very slow dial up.
Anybody know a link that still exists?
I’m not sure that Sandi Toksvig is evidence of any particular BBC Bias – but then I have a soft spot for her clipped military/private-school tones.
Rick, your last couple of posts are spot on.
Sandi Tostvig is not a good comedien,just a conceited Lib-Dim.When shes on Any Questions or Question Time she tries to drag it even further down to her level.She makes what she thinks it a quick humurous comment,then says errm,another comment,rides the applause and finally makes a serious point.Why on earth isnt she in Denmark?
I wouldn’t have any objection to Mark Steel/Jeremy Hardy/Linda Smith if they were balanced out even just a little by someone young and funny with differing views. However what Sandi Toksvig is doing on the News Quiz I really have no idea and judging by the forced laughs I heard the last time she was on neither did the audience. Most of what she said was in defence of or sucking up to Mrs C Blair possibly to try and get a mention in the honours list this year.
Its a pity the News Quiz wasn’t on this week as the SWP’ers on Galloways antics would have been enlightening. Assuming of course they would have got a mention !
Laban has a “soft spot” for Sandi Toksvig’s “clipped military/private-school tones,” but I think that her strangulated voice is actually her second most irritating feature (her unfunniness is her most irritating). The BBC seems to specialize in women presenters with strangulated voices: apart from Sandi there’s the ever-irritating Libby Purves, sometime West Africa correspondent Elizabeth Blunt (I think she’s called) and Jill McGivering, who always sounds about to faint for lack of breath. And that’s before you even get on to the hard-voiced Barbaras, Lises and Orlas (the radio critic Gillian Reynolds described Guerin as having a voice that would freeze marble).
And well-spotted Robin – I thought I was the only one who’d noticed Toksvig’s errrming as she thinks up the next witticism.
Cheers.
I wish I knew how to find the September 13th 2001 Question Time vidcap, Rob… but I haven’t managed to do so yet.
I can’t remember watching it because if I had I’d probably remember. I do remember, however, flying to the UK ten days after 9/11 to watch my beloved Hammers and the most fitting tribute to the victims of the terrorist attacks (apart from the minute’s silence) was our then skipper Paolo di Canio wearing a Stars and Stripes bandana as captain’s armband. “What a great gesture” I thought at the time and I still think so today. I wonder what the Beeb made of it…
That the BBC propergates Iranian Democracy as a fact at all is dangerous as well as inaccurate. Does the BBC think that Cuba, Indonesia, Zimbabwe and good old China are democracies as well. Yes, they do have “elections and votes” but this does not mean they are democratic. However due to the actions of the BBC and the current goverment to undermine what western democracy really is, and is for, I feel now unable to lecture anyone on its merits. This is partly why they do it, and it has worked.
At a local Conservative Party meeting last week I was aroused by the Chairman who was remarking why “we” did not win the last 3 elections. I commented by saying that ” This is a democracy, shurly you did not think we would be in power for ever did you?” Power in Iran, as in those other places only if ever changes with violence, and the X goverment in JAIL or dead. The people of Israel when they hear their democracy compared with Irans must be stunned and be certain the game is up. Its democracy is why its citizens are targeted instead of its military. The silly buggers have even got a Labour Party that is often in power. However this does not impress anyone at the BBC. Because hardly anyone their knows what it is, and those that do dont like it.
SiN: Have you come across this website yet: http://www.socialistwanker.com/ ?
This morning on BBC World Service (radio) there was a comment hosted by Bridget Kendall with phone in comments on Iran.
Quite reasonably a guy from Jordan called in to say noone could trust the Iranian regime with or without nuclear weapons, it was not transparent, nor was it a democracy. That democracies with nuclear weapons seemed safer than unstable dictatorships.
Later an Iranian woman in London called in and Bridget Kendall asked her how old she was – “Thirty-one”. Seemed a bit stupid to ask her points were very valid – that the regime in Iran was illegitimate, undemocratic, backward and hated…………..but La Kendall had to cut her off.
In between they had some nut American commenting from Russia telling us that ordinary Russians supported Iran (????? !!!!!!) and it was all because oil was too cheap. Now it was on a plane the BBC could understand – “Oil” – then he lost even La Kendall by spouting on about the West getting oil too cheap and that oil cost $60/bbl but Coca-Cola cost $400/bbl “at retail”.
Now I know he was some kind of propagandist loon but I believe an oil barrel is 42 US (short) gallons and produces 19.5 gallons of petrol – which means at retail UK petrol prices are (42 short gallons = 35 Imperial gallons) or $268/bbl.
If he really thinks Coca Cola and oil are comparable products he should really start contrasting the price of Intel CPUs and Sand Silicates.
Rick,
I listened to the same programme. I think she asked the Iranian woman how old she was because he voice sounded girlish, but also, just maybe, because she made sense – and the BBC would atribute that to juvenile ignorance.
Kulibar tree,
…(the radio critic Gillian Reynolds described Guerin as having a voice that would freeze marble).
Guerin would probably take that as a compliment.
Her voice aside, Guerin has a face for radio.
And Lyse Doucet has a voice for the print media.
Bitchy today, aren’t I?
The BBC brings out the worst in me.
Er… attribute
I’m slightly bewildered by this post – the two articles highlighted report events in a wholly unbiased way (i.e. the election article makes perfectly clear where supreme power lies in Iran and quotes Bush criticism).
Does Ed really think that the Ahmadinejad arguments are unnewsworthy no matter how b*llocks we might think they are? Is it not worth reporting both sides of the argument? Whilst in my humble opinion there’s no doubt whatsoever that the Iranians need to be stamped on post haste, I’m interested in the counter arguments as I would imagine most other intelligent people are.
If we end up invading the place one would hope that this time we have a reasonable idea of what Iranian public opinion is likely to be, which will inevitably be impacted by stuff like this. My taxes are still funding the consequences of the ‘they’ll obviously welcome us with open arms’ attitude to post war Iraq, justifiable though the war itself may have been….
Surely there’s still room for comprehensive unopinionated coverage between the ‘bomb the Islamofacist bastards now’ and the ‘look, look, Israel has the nasty weapons too’ schools of thought. I like to think I’m bright enough to make my own mind up based on the facts available.
G Powell comments that ‘Power in Iran, as in those other places only if ever changes with violence, and the ex-govt in JAIL or dead’. Must admit I know little about Iran and democracy except that they recently had an election and a new face appeared on our TV screens. But does anyone believe that Britain is anything other than a single ideology totalitarian state? We simply have 3 factions of the same elite contesting elections. In policy terms there is not a ha’porth of difference between the whole lot of them. Genuine opposition is today being prosecuted in Leeds Crown Court….
OT
FOOTBALL FOCUS 2
last night on BBC 2, i DID notice that every quote used by the BBC is practically from
The Observer or The Independent on Sunday..
Note not natural footballing titles, and for that matter both extremely left leaning. They were used 70% of the time, what’s this, indoctrination by the left wing at the BBC supporting their left wing friends elsewhere?
It has been noted this bias again by the BBC. Perhaps the BBC could ‘review’ the situation, and provide quotes from The Mail, The Express, The Telegraph, The Sun etc…?
The BBC as we’re told has no bias, then therefore, it should start to show it..
and the ‘look, look, Israel has the nasty weapons too’ schools of thought. I like to think I’m bright enough to make my own mind up based on the facts available.
I don’t disagree with you. My concern is however that the regime in Teheran is apocalyptic – first of all it starts with the bearded recluse Khomeini and the realms of oriental mysticism and now we have psychotic types looking for the Missing 12th Imam in a fountain in the Jamkaran Mosque and wishing the End of The World so The Mahdi returns to spread sweetness and light.
Compared to this Adolf’s talk of a 1000 Year Reich looks positively modest.
Ian Barnes – please call The Observer by its real title –
The Guardian on Sunday
OT
This is the most worrying state of affairs in our lifetimes:
Erosion of civil liberties
Just as outrageous are the proposals by the govt to allow MI5 to listen to phone calls of politicians, it just goes to show they’ve probably been doing it all along and now want to cover their backs..
This country is heading towards a Soviet state. Phone calls tapped, not allowed to air free speech, monitored everywhere you go by cameras and ID cards, what next? They’ll want to bar code us or brand us like cattle?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/16/ntap16.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/16/ixnewstop.html
even worse was the fact that THE BBC Had no coverage of this at all??????
I’ve been looking for ages on bbc.co.uk and nothing!!!!!
Cover up or what, when the Govt doesnt want it public the BBC has to keep quiet? Now who is under the thumb?
Someone must speak up against this now…
“Bitchy today, aren’t I?”
Not necessarily, Bryan – my old dad used not say, not entirely jokingly, that people with a face like that should stay indoors.
Cheers.
I don’t know if anyone caught John Holme’s contribution to the Now Show on Radio 4? The entire point of his little slot was given over to flat-out ranting anti-Americanism. This is comedy in the same way as Der Volkische Beobachter was for Germans in the 1930s & 40s. I just felt ashamed listening to it: ashamed in case any of my American friends might have caught it; ashamed that a publicly-funded British institution could think it was broadcastable; and ashamed at myself for not having switched it off. Ashamed at myself for not phoning in a complaint there and then, actually. Just horrible.
Jeremy Hardy is as funny as a burst boil.
was it this?
a sketch on “test” audiences for Hollywood Movies ended thus………………..”the sort of Americans who go to test screenings are the sort of Americans who only go to test screenings because in return or thier obese, worthless opinions they are promised a skip full of free all butter fat corn and free buckets of all you can drink fizzy lard” (canned laughter).
It continues…….”I ask you, what is the point of testing anything on Americans unless its a new type of cattle prod or the Ebola virus” (canned laughter)
the “comedy” ends thus…….”and with that, I hope you have a nice day! Y`All” (sarcastic delivery) (canned laughter).
Guerin has a face for radio.
And Lyse Doucet has a voice for the print media.
The 3rd member of the Triumvirate, Barbara Plett, was back in her element yesterday, reporting on the outrage in Pakistan over the “CIA” strike that failed to snuff al-Zawahiri.
I seem to remember that the BBC appeared to consider Ronald Reagan as thick as Bush, strangely, Ronald Reagan was in office when the Soviet Union imploded.
Considering the latest headlines. In this country it’s not crime and punishment, it’s crime and rehabilitation. Prison is not punishment it is rehab. The law is not for the people, it is for lawyers and the judges. Just a reminder.
Tim Hames in “The Times” warns Cameron on the difference between the hard & soft centre of UK politics.
His description of the soft centre would seem to fit the BBC to a T.
The hard centre and the soft fringe — or floating voters and drifting voters — have, though, extraordinarily little in common. A serious political strategy that aspires to capture one has to forfeit seeking the other.
The hard centre has distinctive features. It is sympathetic to market economics but not indifferent to social considerations. It broadly favours the liberty of the individual but is not oblivious to the consequences of anarchic licence. It is realistic about the nature of foreign affairs in the world we live in. If told of the dominance of Tesco at home or McDonald’s overseas, it tends to shrug its shoulders, muse that the public gets what the public wants.
Being in the “centre” does not mean that a voter favours split-the-difference politics or politicians who provide comforting rhetoric. He may be convinced that radical solutions are often required to national policy problems. He can be persuaded that the State does not administer services such as health and education especially well, that nuclear power is necessary to meet future energy needs and that endemic corruption is as responsible for the plight of the Third World as the failure to dig deeper into First World pockets.
None of this is true for the soft fringe. It is instinctively for the Liberal Democrats, or a minor party, or for staying at home on polling day. It is cynical about capitalism, yet with no coherent sense of an alternative. It is vaguely green and faintly pink. It warms to such themes as “small is beautiful”, “local is good” and “older is better”. It might, in the short term, be pleased to discover that the Tory leadership has evolved from the Iron Lady to a Muesli Man, but it is hard to believe that it would sustain that interest.
Even if it did, the price for its support is a manifesto of incoherent mush that would not make much of a programme
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1070-1987499,00.html
better close the italics
http://homepage.mac.com/elliottday/jeremyhardy/jeremyhardyfacts.html
He went to Farnham Boys Grammar School for Girls ????????????
Confused ? Me too !
He is married to American actress and comedienne Kit Hollerbach