When you hear a sub-Mockney accent attacking a politician from the left on Radio Four, you’ll usually find it’s a comedy show featuring several privately educated left-wing comedians who met at university. For some reason, privately educated left-wingers appearing on the Today programme are allowed to keep their middle-class accents.
I think this is Marcus Brigstocke on Radio Four’s “Charm Offensive”. They got half the name right.
Brigstocke :
This phrase, ‘you can put lipstick on a pig’ has been used by Obama before, and by McCain talking about Hillary Clinton – it’s been wilfully misinterpreted – and they deliberately do this, you know, Fox news and lots of the right-wing press in America deliberately misinterpret stuff that the Democrats have said – I mean he also said in that speech “You can nominate Sarah Palin but she’ll still be a honky bitch from Alaska” (laughter) – and they just grab that … (laughter)
Iannucci :
“It’s just another phrase for hockey mom”
In a knife fight, I’d take Palin over some camp limp writed liberal like Dickstock.
Palin would bring a big gun to that knife-fight. She would also bring a knife – to skin the loser.
I listened to the programme and waited for the jokes about Obama and Biden, both obvious figures of fun, but they never came !
By the way, there is an article in today’s Telegraph online by Boris Johnson defending the BBC and the licence fee, if anyone wants to add their thoughts to the comments section.
Heres the Boris piece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=YUVMM04PJ1IIBLARBSQSFFA?xml=/opinion/2008/09/16/do1601.xml
The comments (as usual) say it all!
I am sure the BBC scour the country and beyond to find right-wing comedians “in the interests of objectivity and balance”.
It’s a shame that startlingly unfunny left-wingers like these monopolize BBC comedy these days. The yardstick ought to be ‘is he funny’ regardless of politics.
I distinctly remember the BBC once taking the piss out of people like these sometime during the eighties, on Steve Wright’s show I think.
I had the radio on on Saturday lunchtime. When the announcer mentioned Twatstocke’s name, off it went. I just won’t watch or listen to anything with this smug bastard in it. He’s as funny as cancer. Shame that due to the unique way the BBC is funded I’ve got to subsidise his right-on lifestyle.
Justin Webb’s new blog entry is a bleding disgrace again. Another hit at Palin :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb/2008/09/lotta_sense_on_palin.html?moduserid=movabletype104_36881&pid=68945054&upm=False&asb=False&pmp=False#dnaacs
If you have a moment, drop a couple of comments on the nonsense Webb is spouting.
His tart description of Palin yesterday on Radio 4 was “hunter-gatherer” Bloody fool.
That cunt has started pushing his snout into the trough at ‘Just a Minute’, until now one of the few bearable BBC radio programmes. Last time he was on he was original enough to introduce his cutting-edge opinions on george Bush into the format. See if you can guess what they were
Honky is the white equivalent of nigger.
Will you ever hear rich privately eductated kids at private school totally unfunny lefty so called comedian Brigstocke utter the N word let alone in reference to the Messiah?
Webb is a wanker.
JohnA
Poor old Justin Wankstain, just can’t face up to Obama losing and is getting increasingly desparate !
“desperate” !
I like his comment about “lots of the right-wing press in America”.
Name three.
On the subject of unfunny Lefties, did anyone see Jeremy Hardy on the tellytribute to Humphrey Lyttelton? He said that even after 15 years on “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue” he was still regarded by the rest of the team as the new kid and he seemed miffed about it. One had to wonder whether he’d got that right, and that it might be that he’s regarded as the unfunny kid.
Rob 11:56
While I agree with your post, is the correct spelling not “Wankstocke” ?
I was in the pub Saturday night and that supposedly comic program Charm Offensive came up in the conversation, not one of my mates thought it was funny, it relies on sarcasm and belittling people. I also switched off after the first 5 minutes.
On radio 4 earlier Justin Webb managed to find someone to interview who wasn’t aware of what Palins policies were, and this was presented as proof that she didn’t have any policies. Does he really think this sort of cheap dishonest journalism fools anybody? All it does is earned him contempt from any thinking members of the audience.
Hehehe John, I see you are starting to get peoples heckles up over on Webbs blog 🙂
Or…are you Justin by another name? 😉
Mailman
Re Boris’s article…I dont believe the Proms require money from Al Beeb simply because they are already financial successes in their own right.
Mailman
just out of interest…are there any right wing comedians?…have the beeb ever employed one?
Armando Iannucci, the comedy genius who substitutes insult for wit, killed real laughter years ago. People only notice it now because the corpse of R4 comedy smells sooooo bad.
Ken Dodd has supported the Conservatives in th epast, but he’s far too funny for Radio 4’s lefties. He’d show them all up.
thud:
“are there any right wing comedians?…have the beeb ever employed one?”
Jim Davidson, Kenny Everett.
Thud:
According to the BBC’s warped compass, just about all funny comedians would be classed as ‘right wing’: Ricky Gervaise, Sasha Cohen, Paul Merton, that Pub Landlord bloke, Rowan Atkinson, Ian Hislop, Bernard Manning, Morecombe & Wise, Dean Martin, W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers… basically anyone who doesn’t make sub-Ben Elton jokes about George Bush
His tart description of Palin yesterday on Radio 4 was “hunter-gatherer” Bloody fool.
JohnA | 16.09.08 – 12:09 pm | #
Was it really?
Was it not more along the line
“From hunter/gatherer to Sarah Palin?”
That is as least what I seem to understand. Not that I am a fan of Webb, far from it! However, one should stick to the facts, or not?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/america/
What these people demonstrate is that they are the thing they fear most: provincial. Not one of them has been to Alaska. They judge by their own perfervid imaginations of what Alaska must be like.
Sarah Palin did not come by that hair-do and those Kawasaki (prices start at $795 without the lenses) glasses in the back of a sled. Nor those clothes she wears. Nice shoes, too. They don’t have what looks like badminton raquets attached to the soles.
It is the BBC, not Governor Palin, which is spine-chlllingly provincial.
Incidentally, Sarah Palin gets around outside the big cities by flying her own (not the property of the state) seaplane, which she lands on remote stretches of very deep, icy cold water. I wonder if Armando and the other provincial hicks would have the belly to land a seaplane, at speed, on a vast bottomless lake.
Sarah Palin’s a talented and canny chief executive. What have Armando & Cie ever run? She’s a crack shot. Has Armando ever so much as seen a rifle up close?
She also has a quicker wit and better comebacks than any of them.
I’ve been following her, and touting her, for around two months now and I was elated when she got chosen. Her principles are as true as her aim.
It stands to reason that the BBC and the slithy toves would despise her with unalloyed viciousness.
Gunnaar writes: “Was it not more along the line
“From hunter/gatherer to Sarah Palin?”
Hunter, yes. But what is there to gather in Alaska?
Surely the real joke is that people in the BBC think they could influence even one American to vote one way or the other?
On the subject of left-wing vs right-wing comedy: There’s a fun video report on Founding Bloggers that you folks should check out:
http://www.foundingbloggers.com/wordpress/2008/08/roasting-obama/
“Surely the real joke is that people in the BBC think they could influence even one American to vote one way or the other?”
They probably could, but only in the States which Obama has in the bag already.
What makes me laugh is the way the BBC seem to think you’ve got to be some left wing rent boy loving drug taking twat to be ‘qualified’ to run a Country.
What makes me laugh is the way the BBC seem to think you’ve got to be some left wing rent boy loving drug taking twat to be ‘qualified’ to run a Country.
Martin | 16.09.08 – 3:21 pm | #
Really?
Anything to back this up or are we just joking again (you know, tongue in cheek).
DeeGee 3:11
Actually the BBC do influence the US vote.
The more they and their fellow UK lefties support the Democrats, the more likely Americans are to vote Republican.
But, Justin Wankstain ,his fellow beeboids, and all the smartarse , lefty “comedians” on the BBC are just too dim to realise that !
Hey, can’t the Beeb organise a letter-writing campaign in support of Obama like The Guardian did last time in Ohio? Worked a treat.
gunnar: Yes, the BBC like all liberal media thinks you should go to University, take a degree in some wank subject, spend several years as a bum licker or bag carrier to a politician and then become an MP.
What out of that pile of shit qualifies someone to lead a Country?
Look at the bunch of twats running the UK right now. Gordon Brown, what has this soap dodger EVER run or done outside of being a failed politician? Tony Blair what did he ever do?
Take the biggest fuckwit of them all Tony Benn. He fucked up British industry yet never ran anything more complicated than a tap.
Lefties are losers and the BBC and Guardian newspaper would have failed a long time ago were it not for the millions pumped into them via the tax payer.
Martin,
Sorry, I thought you meant that Blair and Brown were “some left wing rent boy loving drug taking twats”, as you put it.
Guess this would have been the scoop of the year, but hey you distanced yourself from this.
You now state that the BBC thinks studying some useless subject qualifies someone for the position of MP. What could those be?
Philosophy? Politics? Economics?
gunnar: The BBC believes that anyone who is a limp wristed liberal will be a good leader, but anyone who takes an opposing view is not.
I don’t think anyone who has gone to University is necessarily qualified to run the Country and in particular professional politicians.
Take the fat one eyed jock. What on earth ever made people think this soap dodger would be a good leader?
He’s dodged (along with the soap) every hard decision he’s had to make. As Chancellor he used to put up one of his minions to face the select committees.
When tough questions need answering this vile little tub of lard goes missing in action. He used our soldiers in Iraq as a political tool to bolster his own popularity then was found out to have lied about bringing thousands of them home.
Then we had the shambles of the Lisbon Treaty where the great leader didn’t have the bottle to show up with all the others to sign the bloody thing. Did he really think we wouldn’t notice?
Tony Blair was another two faced lying bastard that sold this Country down the river.
A good leader is one that makes decisions not based on politics or what the BBC rent boys want, but what is good for this nation.
A good leader is one that takes the shit for getting it wrong.
A good leader is one that doesn’t tolerate lies and spin from the media.
Thatcher was probably the best leader we’ve had in the last 50 years. Certainly in my lifetime.
Even if you didn’t agree with her politics, she knew how to lead a nation.
Did anyone else here think Martin was actually claiming Blair, Brown and Obama were habitual drug users and rent boy clients, or is it only Gunnar that struggles with hyperbole?
Gunnar,
I think Martin was suggesting that rather too many of our politicians – notably some of the current cabinet – have had no exposure whatsoever to the demands of the private sector or to the demands of the financial responsibilities (in simple terms making money and not overspending) that go with it. Studying any subject – crap or otherwise, even economics – at any University, crap or otherwise, is inadequate preparation for being thrust in charge of a major nation’s finances.
It’s not an unreasonable argument to make, yet one that is never considered on the BBC, to my knowledge. His point about Tony Benn is absolutely correct, if strongly worded, though he is a little harsh on Tony Blair, who spent some time as a barrister.
The BBC in particular is in a terrible position to make this argument, because of the unique way it is funded. It’s penchant for employing arts graduates as specialist scientific and economic editors exacerbates this (as opposed to, say, Jeff Randall, now with Sky), don’t you think?
Surely this is a valid argument?
Laban
Sorry to be critical, but when you made this post, the label at the bottom said Comedy. I must protest at this misrepresentation of the truth – nothing that emanates from Brigstocke’s mouth can accurately be described as such. I would have accepted “Comedy” with the associated inverted commas, or perhaps you could have coined one of the BBC’s favourite phrases when dealing with anything right of Karl Marx and put “So-called ‘Comedy'” as the label.
I hope you can find time to make the alteration.
Hugh: My point was (if a bit harsh on our liberal friends and their ‘habits’) is that the BBC seems to think if you are from the left are are a liberal that somehow you are a good leader.
Take Obama. There has been no analysis of his as a person or if HE has the qualities to lead America. But Sarah Palin has been totally taken apart by the BBC even down to her disabled child.
It was the same with the fat one eyed jock. When he became leader, the BBC just said “bend over Gordon and tell us how hard to lick”. Yet we know that Gordon Brown is a man with some clear problems. What was it Alistair Campbell said about Brown again?
The first relates to what Alastair Campbell famously referred to as Gordon’s “psychological flaws”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/10/06/do0601.xml
But the BBC have NEVER done anything else other than paint Brown as a genius. Something he is clearly not.
Yet the BBC continues ot attack right wing politicians in a way it won’t do on th left.
Heron: Spot on. Far too many of our politicians come from the same background.
Professional politicians who are more interested in their party than the nation. I point the finger at ALL parties here, not just Nu Liebour.
The difference is Nu Liebour has the BBC acting as their official broadcaster at our expense.
Take the 10p tax shambles. It was CLEAR from the moment the fat one eyed jock announced it in LAST YEARS budget this would effect millions of people. But did the BBC bother to make an issue of it?
No. Check back on this blog and we all saw how the BBC tried to spin on behalf of the fat one eyed on when it all came out in this years budget.
If that had been a Tory plan, the BBC would have had Panorama after Panorama shows slaughtering the Tories.
Gunnar is Scandinavian – he only knows jokes about fish.
Martin – I understood your point. I was just getting a little irritated with Gunnar’s trolling.
Remember that Iannucci has (had?) a column in the Observer where he wrote pieces like this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/29/gordonbrown
Note he puts Gordon Brown’s problem down to “the impossibility of selling a realistic solution to the whingeing growbags that are the British public” while attacking the Tories as tricking people and lacking knowledge.
Given his clear support for Labour over the Conservatives what special precautions have the BBC ever taken to ensure his output for the corporation is either impartial or balanced with alternative views?
Given the output I think we know the answer.
If anyone in the BBC ever used to take it as a badge of honour that listeners / viewers could not identify their personal political views, it now appears to be a badge of honour to see how much they can get away with without getting a slap on the wrist.
Hugh: Yep I know mate I was just trying to make it clear for the retarded liberals!!
I find it quite funny that these leftist ‘comedians’ believe themselves to be funny. But the audiences?? Where do those people come from? Is it a BBC-run indoctrination camp a la Manchurian Candidate where the sound of the words – George Bush – brings forth reflexive laughter?
Radio 4 comedy is rank. The Now Show? It’s just not funny. At all.
Forget political bias, this is a clear-cut case of the BBC being biased against people with a semi-decent sense of humour.
Perhaps the audience are tranquilised and taken to the studio, then tickled with feathers?
Allan@Oslo | 16.09.08 – 7:19 pm:
OT
Alan I’ve not received your e-mail address but mine hasn’t changed if you want to contact me.
“He’s as funny as cancer.”
That is because Brigstocke is a tumourist.