I know we have already covered Danny Cohen’s pronouncement that BBC comedy is not “working class” enough, but I must say how I enjoyed this debate on the subject on Today this morning. James Delingpole is excellent and comedian Chris McGlade does not say what they think he is going to say. So the entire interview goes WRONG but in a good way. Listen to Justin squirm, it will set you up for the day.
MIDDLE CLASS COMEDY
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Wow and double wow DV! What excellent unintentional comedy!
One can imagine the heart attacks being caused in the TODAY studio as that went out on air!
Chris McGlade issues a press statement at the Edinburgh Festival about comedy on the BBC being too middle class, and some BBC exec rolex’s him in the safe assumption he can be relied on in the future to trot out all the platitudes they want him to.
WRONG!
The horror and dread in Justin Webb’s voice when McGlade said Delingpole and him were “shooting from the same page”! A rare moment of joy indeed on the TODAY programme.
It simply didn’t dawn on the BBC that the “middle class comedy” McGlade had referred to in his press statement was the ‘university educated comedy’ that arose from the ‘alternative movement’ and edged out the working class gagsters like Jim Davidson and Bernard Manning because Ben Elton didn’t approve of them.
One got the sense that BBC staff were frantically at the controls trying to get out of the tailspin the interview had gone in for them.
Any doubts that Webb was trying to implant that his two guests were not on the same page was when McGlade said ‘Political Correctness is a scourge’.
This was pure joy DV and a million thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Britain can still wrest control of the BBC from the Marxist cuckoo.
The only pity was that McGlade did not name some names – the usual unfunny BBC “edgy comedians”
(Has anyone ever heard McGlade ? Will the BBC give him a 6.30pm series on Radio 4 ???)
I was enjoying imaginingthe spits of tea in the BBC when their choice of left-wing comedian mentioned Jim Davidson (Tory) and Bernard Manning (racist) approvingly – comedy gold!
If you listen Webb says “I do not want you to shoot from the same place”. No bias there then
Brilliant !
Poor old, middle-class, Justin , must have been wetting himself.
Working-class Chris McGlade goes totally off-script , but has just talked himself out of a career as an edgy BBC “comedian”.
Some teenage Beeboid researcher is going to be shot for this !
Great fun !
The interview was pure gold, it brightened my day no end, no wonder the interview came to an early end!
Oooh dear me, beeboids get tripped up haha hahaha haha 😀 niiiiice.
It started when Dellingpole claimed that it showed why the licence extotion should be stopped and went down hill from then on. Its all so simple to undestand, comedy should be chosen on the grounds of how funny it is end of story, its what popular entertainment is all about. Comedy is not about political education and social programming and equality indoctrination FFS, its supposed to be about making people laugh.
The BBC role is now social modification is it? You can imagine how many beeboids sat around in endless meetings, dozens of highly paid parasites wringing their hands about such rubbish instead of making and buying in funny comedy.
Did you read that Jeremy Lloyd piece in the Mail Online about a very current comedy he’s written about the crisis that the BBC find funny but wont produce it for political reasons.
He then told us how comedy got produced in his day – a day incidentally that was Britain’s golden era of tv comedy? Lessons to be learnt BBC? Well of course not. Not when you’re a Gramscian cuckoo in the nest there to subvert the nation. What’s the point of a comedy if it doesn’t inculcate a message in the consciousness of the nation that will lead them to agree like zombies with your point of view?
We need to bring down the iron curtain of the BBC.
Webb tried to smother Dellingpole when he mentioned getting rid of the licence fee. Note also how there was absolutely no engagement from Webb with Dellingpole’s key point namely, that these questions of ‘what shall our listeners/views get?’ only arises where there’s no free market and therefore no direct signal from the consumers about what they want. Instead, he blithely contiunued asking that same question.
If you recall the “Equality Questionnaire” It stated that the BBC has a mission to create a more equal society. This was news to me as it isn’t in the charter
Working class comedy ?…how patronising is that…
If its funny its universal by definition.
If these people had a sense of humour they wouldnt be senior execs at the BBC in the first place.
A sense of humour is by its very nature subversive and is probably not the best attribute to get you up the BBC greasy pole.
Still trying to locate it (my maths not up to getting from start point to where claimed to be), and actually listening to a bunch of comedy gold in the iPlayer tripe unfurling as I write.
Had to love the Beeboid sneering ‘Murdoch papers’ have not mentioned the NoTW travails, perhaps ironically missing most in the media taking a lot of interest in Mr. Sissons’ revelations as tumbleweed bumps over the bubbly bottles in the corridor chez Aunty.
The trouble with existing in a bubble is you soon end up gasping from exhaled air.
Tailfish Bob has nailed the Beboids mindset which is patronising to all those whose cause it believes it is pushing. I made a similar comment about how patronising they are to people from ethnic minorities, and when the more intelligent turn out to have conservative views it horrifies them.
The same here – “We support Labour so the Working Class must follow what we tell them. They must want to see comedies about themselves, but I’m not going to leave my Islington penthouse to ask them if it’s what they want”.
Shakespeare only wrote one play set among ordinary people (what we would now probably call Middle Class) but that didn’t stop the real workers, who were generally very poor, flocking to see all his plays about kings and queens, merchants and generals. They loved it, and they laughed at the comedies because they were funny. The BBC mindset is very patronising to say the least.
Demon,
You are right about the BBC being patronising to the groups it pretends to be promoting, gays, muslims, blacks, the “working class” etc. But, Beeboids are so insensitive , ideologically driven, stupid and divorced from common humanity , they just don’t get it.
As I have posted before, if a Beeboid went into a “working class pub” what the hell would he have in common with the drinkers there ?
Brilliant! James D was excellent. And didn’t precious little Justin sound like a prize twat?!
Yup, the wheels are coming off the stinking BBC.
Lovely spot there! “PC is a scourge” – priceless!
Not a good day for the Toady mob. A few minutes later there was a woman on who said that those cities with the healthiest private sectors – she mentioned Leeds, Bristol and Reading – werecoming out of the recession in better shape than those with large public sectors. So how does the BBC report this on the Toady website? As follows:
“According to the Centre for Cities annual index, Cities Outlook 2011, <!– S ILIN –>UK cities are bouncing back from the recession, <!– E ILIN –>including some of those hardest hit by job losses such as Hull, Doncaster and Northampton. Alexandra Jones, who runs the Centre for Cities research unit, outlines why some cities are fairing better than others.”
Neither Hull, nor Doncaster nor Northampton is as much as mentioned. The Beeb would seem to have gone from “putting a slant on it” to “just making it up”.
just been to northampton for the first time in 9 years,more cheap 99p shops,shops boarded up,no reason to go for another 9 years.Bouncing back i dont think so,I thought Coventry was bad but northampton gives it a run for its money….
The beeb we make it up its in our DNA
And then precious Justin dissed Outnumbered. How very dare he!
Seriously, it’s hard to know where to start with this. Great comments about Ben Elton and Frankie Boyle, but why has nobody mentioned Shameless, The Royle Family, Benidorm, Skins, The Only Way is Essex (unintential comedy but definitely Working Class), the numour in EastEnders and Corrie and the ilk.
Similarly, there’s a very unattractive stream of ‘reality’ mock-the-afflicted programmes now that generally pick on the uneduated or stupid.
Each and every one of them commissioned by a Tristram!
And of course, the real point was never made – Namely, that despite the BBC’s 30+ years of pursuing the ‘authentic working-class voice of comedy’, a very high percentage of BBC comedy producers and performers come from the public school + Cambridge footlights route to the screen, and employ others who fit the same criteria. Wonderful to see that the same thought process that abhores ‘success through talent’ rather than Stalinist ‘plans’ is alive and well at the Beeb!?
On the plus side this could mean that Marcus Brigstocke disappears from the airwaves
Dellers wont be invited back. His name will go into the black book. The first comandment of the BBC – Thou shalt not mention the TV License.
It was a calculated risk that disasterously backfired on the BBC.
The script was ‘horny handed son of toil comedian duffs up Telegraph Tarquin in support of Controller of BBC1’.
Oh joy of joys, what they got was extempore freeform beyond their wildest avant garde imaginings!
Careers are at stake here. What would happen to Stephen Fry if comedians had to be funny?
I suspect that the BBC will get its own back. Dellers definitely fears so in respect of his contribution to tonoght’s programme in the Horizon series
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y4yql
In effect it appears that the programme comprises a propaganda outing fronted by Sir Paul Nurse the new President of the Royal Society.
Dellingpole posted the comment below on the Bishop Hill blog at
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/1/22/more-bbc-propaganda.html
“I’m in it. I’ve a strong suspicion I’ve been completely shafted. I’ll let you know when I’ve seen it, but my initial response after I did the interview was this: the BBC approached me to see whether I’d be interviewed by the new president of the Royal Society Sir Paul Nurse on “Why we no longer trust scientists.” I said “I don’t think it’s true we no longer trust scientists. Just ‘climate’ ‘scientists’. And I’d love to tell you why.” I’d hoped, I suppose, that Nurse was going to be more open-minded than his dismal Royal Society predecessors. But it was pretty clear from the off that he knew exactly what he thought already. He is another true believer in the Warmist creed. Why? Well scientists: they’ve got integrity that’s why. Nurse KNOWS this because he’s a scientist, see. They just wouldn’t make stuff up. Ergo people who think otherwise are just ignorant muck rakers.
Jan 22, 2011 at 10:32 AM | <img src=”http://bishophill.squarespace.com/universal/images/core-resources/icons/dark/user-unregistered.png” title=”Unregistered Commenter” alt=”Unregistered Commenter”/>James Delingpole ”
It’s actually unprecedented for the RS to have three presidents in a row (including Nurse) who are happy for the RS to take sides in a live scientific controversy. In the past the RS did not, I believe, actually issue official statements to the effect that the Phlogiston Theory was wrong or that the Theory of Relativity was right. However, in respect of CAGW, the RS has more or less issued an anathema on all CAGW sceptics – scientists and others.
It seems that the object of tonight’s Horizon is to let us know that anyone who calls themselves a scientist (particularly a “climate scientist”) is infallible when issuing statements ex cathedra endorsing beliefs approved by the BBC and Sir Paul. Thank God the BBC is in complete control here and nothing “controversial” will either be aired or, if aired, will be immediately trashed by “a scientist”. I see that the description of the programme includes the much overused word “passionate” as in “this [programme] is a passionate defence of the importance of scientific evidence”. We’ll see although – on the basis of the BBC record on reporting “science” – I think it would be more acccurate to rephrase that last quote to read that the programme is a passionate defence of the importance of “evidence from scientists” which is not quite the same particularly in “climate science”.
I love class war. I also love people who think the world must be frozen in time to maintain class separation, and are proud of it (so long as they themselves are permitted to climb up the greasy pole).
And which “university-educated” comedians is McGlade referring to, I wonder? The Oxbridge boys of Monty Python or of Mitchell and Webb? What a shock ol’ Justin agrees with him and says, “There you are.”
Why is PC-ness the reason “middle class” comedy is easiest to do? Is ol’ Justin saying that the working classes are too racist to be allowed on TV these days?
The best part was the end of it where they had to cut off McGlade for making the exact same complaints about edgy comedians we do here. The Today producers’ coffee must taste very bitter this morning.
The stupid thing about Danny Cohen’s ideas is that many of the “middle-class” comedies are actually taking the piss of people in the middle class.
Recent examples include Clare in the Community and Ed Reardon’s Week. (Sorry – I find it very hard to think of any other “comedy” that is actually funny on BBC radio, apart from I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”. Much of the BBC’s PC-obsessed “comedy is a pain to listen to, unfunny, noisy-to-no-purpose, sycophantic, plus lots of false or OTT applause)
No mention of the Royale Family – working class humour that left me cold.
I had the misfortune last Monday or Tuesday (or maybe Wednesday?) to hear the latest offering from Lenny Henry on Radio 4 in a sitcom in the 6:30 pm “comedy” slot. It was dire. The only “humour” was Lenny’s “father” speaking in a cod-West Indian accent. Even the tame audience was stunned into near silence by the endless stream of humourless banter. Nevertheless I wouldn’t be surprised if Danny spots this as a candidate for translation to BBC1. After all, it is Lenny Henry and it’s been all of a nano-second since he or his (ex)wife appeared in a BBC series.
Taking up Dellingpole’s point, were the BBC exposed to commercial pressures this crap wouldn’t see the light of day.
Having listened to the ‘BBC edit’ (fast becoming a code for ‘blatant narrative enhancing effort’), the start and finish are, at best, ‘abrupt’.
Anyone know what time it was and how long the full segment ran just to discover what, as these days seem almost inevitable, they deemed the public could be spared in the retelling.
‘My God, Mrs. Lincoln, we can only assume it was [snip]… Sarah Palin! But apart from that did you…’
It starts at 2:21 in of the ‘Programme In Full’ stream. Justin Webb ends it with the usual “We’ve got to leave it there” at the exact same spot the excerpted version cuts off. So about 6 minutes in total. Only Webb’s brief intro is left out, I think. Just the edits are a bit rough.
Ta. 🙂
Rough edits… well, they are on a budget.
Of course the BBC knows that there is “Good working class humour”. This is written by middle class To**ers about the working class and illustrates issues. And there is “Bad working class humour” written by working class people. Guess which variety gets onto the BBC.
I seldom if ever see the BBC 1 popular output, but the sickening warped vision they have of the ‘working class’ shown on East Enders etc shows they have very little idea about class division. Perhaps they need to concentrate on the comedy implicit in Braitains ‘benefit aristocracy’ – the parasitic class non-working class, that lives a life of ease based on my tax. That would be funny!
Hopefully Chris MCGlade will get in touch with me.
I am writing a comedy about a boozy old newsreader who spawns a weekend rebel of a son.
Said son gets his dads old job as a newsreader and chokes on his latte whenever his salary, his airmiles or his treachery in shafting a Posh Ed(no-not one of the Labour ones!).
Soundtrack by Joy Division and we`re all to wear dark overcoats and blame Thatcher for anything-Jeremy Vine to co-star in the Jeremy and Justin Show!
I saw this on the daily Mash – an excellent humourous site
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-%26-entertainment/bbc-launches-inquiry-into-what-working-class-people-like-201101243462/
to quote,
Working class lady, Nikki Hollis, said: “It’s true that I’m not really a fan of My Family. Maybe it’s because I can’t relate to the characters and their affluent bourgeois lifestyle.
“But more likely it’s because it feels like someone has wedged my mouth open and is shovelling in spoonful after spoonful of freshly squeezed Labrador excrement.
“I don’t find it class-ist. I find it shit.”
LoL.
On the possibly optimistic presumption that they do read a bit more within the bubble than the Graun, I wonder how it is going down chez aunty that they are becoming ever more bizarre bad parodies of themselves?
Please, please please BBC, commision a second Chris and James show.
I haven’t laughed so much in ages.
Just when you think it will be a dull affair, it takes you by surprise and turns into brilliant comedy, aided and abetted by the straightman Justin who plays it to perfection.
Does anyone know when it will be released on CD ?
World-wide appreciation must surley follow and celebrate the fact that “national treasure” has, after 20 years or so, rediscovered it’s sense of humor.
The really hilarious joke is that these extremely unfunny middle class turds who call themselves comedians expend a great deal of enegry with their mockney accents trying to demonstrate that they are working class born and bred – be it Blackheath raised and grammar school educated Ar’fur Smith or public school marxists Brigstocke and Mark Thomas
I’ve taken great delight in ensuring total accuracy on this count in their wiki entries.
Don’t forget the cod “bluff Yorkshireman” Shuttleworth – never off the air these days. To date I have never heard him say a single funny thing.
Isn’t that awful Catherine Tate supposed to be working class. When she says that hilarious line “Am I bovvered” I just roll on the floor in convulsions. More of this please Mr. Cohen. This really is an accurate picture of the working class.
I AM CHRIS MCGLADE!!! Can anyone give me a job? Seriously, if you aren’t middle class, university educated, if you don’t do that un-funny, middle class alternative comedy, if you aren’t pc…sorry, if you aren’t pc but aren’t university educated and middle class either, then you dont get a sniff of work at the beeb, you dont even get responded to, no matter how good you are, or how much experience you’ve had, by top agents or managers and in the main, you dont get paid gigs until youve been flogged to death on the open mic circuit
Isn’t it funny? The alternative puppet masters hated benny hill because he was too sexist, but gladly feed us leigh francis aka keith lemon. They hounded manning and davidson for being offensive, yet embrace messrs Boyle and Carr? They are daring and brave, manning and co are racist and ignorant? The hypocrisy is astounding. Anyone want to help me start a comedy revolution? Only people who can seriously help need apply.
John Sullivan left school at 15 with no qualifications and yet wrote the best sitcom of the 1980s. He based Del Boy on real life traders that he’d actually seen in his local market. Likewise Johnny Speight writing about his native Canning Town. The sad thing is that neither of these wonderful writers would have got a look in today at the politically correct and supposedly ‘inclusive’ BBC.
James Delingpole gets a bit confused with Porridge, Richard Beckinsale being middle class isn’t the issue, the point is that Clement and La Frenais did the impossible-they made a brilliant comedy set in, of all places, a prison! That’s genius.
When middle class writers put words into the mouths of working class characters they tend to go badly awry: their characters tend to be crude ciphers for their own political viewpoints. In short, they’re just not credible. Eastenders suffers from this particular BBC in house style, where ‘ishoos’ drive plot not character and it is unwatchable as a result.