Sandy Toksvig, presenter of Radio 4’s so-called News Quiz – actually a propaganda fest for the presenter’s and panellists’ liberal prejudices – summarises all that I loathe about the BBC. She’s a lefty, smug, holier-than-thou, no-talent performer who thinks she’s very funny. Despite this, she’s carved out a career at the corporation and she is evidently adored by her bosses.
Miss Toksvig clearly thought it was hilarious in an edition of her show which -in keeping with the rest of the BBC output – mentioned government cuts. She declared: “It’s the Tories who put the ‘n’ into cuts”. Now I am not a prude, but the use of this word is still at the frontier of what is acceptable, and for women I know, is regarded as deeply offensive, especially if used gratuitously. But Ms Toksvig’s BBC boss at Radio 4, Paul Mayhew Archer, didn’t think so. He regarded her little joke as “delightful”, and he authorised the head of complaints to say:
“I want you to know that I thought very hard about whether to allow Sandi’s joke to be broadcast.I knew it might offend some listeners, and if my job was simply not to risk offending any listeners I could have cut it instantly. But that is not my job.My job here was to balance the offence it might cause some listeners against the delight it might give other listeners. I say delight because I thought it was a good joke and I knew that a huge number of fans of the programme would love it.”
And for the Mail on Sunday, which has splashed with the story, a spokesman defended this further. He defined the language only as ‘robust’ and therefore acceptable.
My question for Mr Mayhew Archer and his censor-hating BBC colleagues is this. If a right-wing guest (pretending for a second they exist on the BBC) had in the course of the quiz mentioned the ‘n’ word about blacks, what would his reaction have been? My guess is he would have been insulted for his use of nasty language by everyone from the director general downwards and barred for life from ever appearing on the BBC again.
Irrespective of the broader debate about the ‘c’ word, this episode underlines the blatant, unpleasant hypocrisy of the BBC. They are forever pushing back boundaries of taste – but only when it suits their liberal agenda.
Peter Hitchens:
(scroll down)
” BBC’s only taboo c-word is ‘Conservative'”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1394326/PETER-HITCHENS-You-want-louts-like-punished-You-nasty-extremist-like-me.html
Conservative is not taboo at the BBC when it can be used in a negative way, although they prefer the word “Tory” as it is easier to say it with a snarl.
Hitchens hits the nail on the head again. Every time I’ve written to the BBC I’ve received a reply making pathetic excuses for their bias and ludicrous claims about ‘impartiality’.
I’m still waiting for them to make a Panorama special where they dump a gay couple in the Alum Rock area of Birmingham. We can then compare the results with the episode where they dumped an Asian couple on a sink estate in Bristol.
It is for the reasons you mention that I stopped listening to the News Quiz a long time ago. Now, if I inadvertently switch on the radio while this programme is being broadcast, I make a frantic leap to the off switch. I don’t even like to hear Ms Toksvig’s voice (some would describe her as a pig in knickers; and the runt of the litter at that). The same goes for Mr Hardy; his enervating persona is beyond camp, it’s more like a cold pool of body fluids.
Sandi Toksvig is presumably the one who puts the “c” in runt of the litter.
John,
It is her laugh that gets me. Like a teenage girl on amphetamines.
As much as I loathe the BBC’s mindset, I cannot get offended by this joke which is actually in the mind of the listener. When I heard it, I assumed it was a comparative reference to the uselessness of Cnut’s wish to hold back the tide.
Yeah, right…
Heh š To the pure of heart all things are pure…but it’s in the mind of the listener because I for one have both read and heard it before so it wasn’t hard to get.
During the general election News Quiz regular Jeremy Hardy tweeted “you can lie about Tories because there is a higher truth: they’re cunts.”
For the BBC’s stable of lefty comics it would seem it’s not just acceptable to describe Tories in this way, it’s de rigueur. A couple of weeks ago I caught the end of one of those generic news-related smugfests that R5L airs every Sunday morning in which an assortment of comedians and media luvvies spend an hour being very pleased with themselves. The presenter of this latest incarnation was Nick Hancock who was giving a rundown of events for the following week. The news that Obama would be meeting David Cameron that Tuesday inspired unfunny comedienne Rhona Cameron to make the sophisticated observation that it would be great if Obama rang up the PM and said “C U Next Tuesday.” Oh, how they giggled like naughty chilkdren. Imagine the uproar at the BBC if someone had directed the same obscene innuendo towards the blessed Obama (or his wife). I doubt that person would be on the Beeb again any time soon.
(Re. R5L Sunday mornings and use of the c-word – two can play at that game.)
“pleased withj themselves” ? Pleasuring themselves, more like it.
“you can lie about Tories because there is a higher truth: they’re cunts.”
“You believe in freedom of speech for communists because what they say is true. You do not believe in freedom of speech for fascists because what they say is a lie.”–John Howard Lawson, one of the “Hollywood Ten”, head of the Hollywood division of the Communist Party of the USA.
I thought you said it was a joke, I see no joke anywhere. A comic she aint!
She’s a dyke, and the BBC love dykes. Balding on a bike’s another one (it must be the chaffing of the shorts…)
Sandi Toksvig, Rhona Cameron … maybe the lezzas have got a little competition going to see if they can get surreptitious “cunt” references onto the BBC. I wonder if Susan Calman has tried a bit of cunt on air yet.
Credit where credit’s due…
I very recently heard Danny Baker on BBC Radio London commenting in words to the effect, ‘Comics, it’s not their job to keep going on about war and dead babies all the time. I want them to entertain me. I want to see them wearing red and yellow chequered jackets, I don’t want them in lounge suits – showing me how well they’re doing’.
When a few words from the inside slip out it can count for a lot.
Normal service has been resumed.
As I see it,
“Count “. You should be on the News Quiz.
I see there’s also a Simon Mayhew Archer who produces comedy shows for BBC radio. Any relation to defender of the c-word Paul Mayhew Archer who was until recently commissioning editor of Radio 4 comedy? Just coincidence, I’m sure.
what i want to know is
where is Toksvig’s neck?
I’m sure b-bbcers can think up a few humorous responses!! š
Perhaps the weight of all those strap-on “appliances” has caused everything to sink.
With the head, it’s firmly thrust up her arse. (Perish the thought).
The real rot at the BBC comes from their so called ‘comedians’. It’s how they try to make their extreme-left views seem mainstream.
Comedians shouldn’t have an agenda, they should just tell jokes. Instead at the BBC we have:
Jeremy Hardy (SWP/UAF member and supporter of organised political violence)
Mark Thomas (self confessed Communist)
Mark Steel (self-confessed Communist)
Then of course a whole array of dripping-wet PC right-on trendy leftists, such as Russell Howard, Steve Punt, Hugh Dennis etc. etc. whose ‘comedy’ routines usually involve taking someone who’s political views they disagree with and then mocking their appearance.
Hardy, Thomas and Steel’s views, particularly, probably represent a fraction of one percent of the public’s opinion, so why are they given so much air-time, by a supposedly ‘impartial’ broadcaster, to regurgitate their minority views?
Steve Punt, eh? Come on Sandi, I’m sure you can come up with a one-liner.
She might manage it, she’s got nearly a week to think of one.
The “joke” was part of the chairman’s script, the writers of which are duly credited at the end of the show.
erratum: ‘Communist’ should of course always be in quotes because they’re no more ‘Communist’ than you or I.
I had the misfortune at uni to share a flat with a ‘Communist’. When it came to buying Paki (gasp) Black by the pound and selling it by the quarter ounce he seemed pretty ‘Capitalist’ to me.
(Junk Male Jeremy) Hardy has honed that affected insouciance speaking style, but it does nothing to mask his bitter and rancorous left-wing views, and was the reason I stopped listening to The News Quiz a long time ago. I refer to him and Mark Steel as The Chippy Twins, for obvious reasons.
And why aren’t these two hammering away at the fact that Barak Obama promised to close Guantanamo within a year of taking office two-and-a-half years ago, but which remains stubbornly open for business? They assuredly would if this broken promise about one of their pet hates had happened on Dubya’s watch.
Speaking of right-on, sanctimonious pricks, how does Billy Bragg square his man-of-the-people act with living in a property that a ‘rich banker’ wouldn’t mind gracing? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/8241614/Hate-mail-urges-villagers-to-drive-out-Billy-Bragg.html
If you’re a writer or performer, you wouldn’t need to use the ‘n’ word to be barred for life from the BBC.
All you’d have to do is make the target of the ‘c’ word joke someone like Gordon Brown or Ed Balls or Alasdair Campbell or Peter Mandelson, in other words a genuine, indisputable ‘c.’
Then stand back and watch your career implode.
A revealing observation in the comments at the blog Tabloidwatch (a particlular favourite of Guardian reading media types – eg BBC employees):
I remember that joke on the News Quiz. “The Tories – the party who put the N into cuts” or something similar. I thought it was pretty funny. Never even occurred to me people might be offended. (Except Tories, but they should be used to it by now…)
You said a whole bunch there, pal.
Yeah give him his own programme.
I’m no prude myself either but I get irritated by the ‘edgy’ swearing by these people. Firstly in the round it cheapens the country… is that really how we want people to talk? And secondly, it’s the last resort (ho ho) for people who’re running out of ideas. My material not funny? Ok I’ll say f*** that’ll get a laugh.
The BBCC defence is pathetic – ‘context’. ie if you watch Norton or Ross or Ramsay then you know what to expect, therefore tough if you’re offended.
So unless you complain the very first time that Ross says ‘f***’ you can never complain because the ‘context’ has been set.
Pathetic.
The BBC dont do traditional comedy, what they do is political conditioning and a generous helping of childish spite and prejdice which is given a thin gloss of humour with which to cover it, look they say, its comedy and it makes people laugh.
These people are so far up their own arse they can lick their tonsils from the back. Never met a smug puffed up lefty I didnt want to push under a bus, not that I advocate violence against others of course. They play to their own sense of superiority, its hate dressed up in thin clothes, its prejudice and spite covered by a thin veneer.
“These people are so far up their own arse they can lick their tonsils from the back.”
š
Cassie, that made me laugh more than anything Sandi has ever come up with – and it’s a lot more clever. (I intend to commit it to memory!)
craig,
I am still trying to work out how that is possible. Maybe someone can explain to me. On second thoughts………..
And this made me laugh heartily:
Never met a smug puffed up lefty I didnt want to push under a bus, not that I advocate violence against others of course.
š
“not that I advocate violence against others of course”
I don’t advocate violence against lefties either.
Now whether I’d stick my neck out to help a leftie – that’s another matter entirely.
I think we’ve got to get things in perspective here. I’m a Christian, so wouldn’t tell this joke myself, but it isn’t the actual use of the ‘c’ word. It’s very close to the edge, but as comic invention goes its excellent. Hypocrit that I am, when I read the Mail piece and actually got down to the joke, I laughed out loud.
There is an issue of political bias here, but its not a biggie. There are far, far worst things we need to worry about on the BBC.
Disagree, hippiepooter. It may seem petty but this sort of shit is at the heart of the culture war the left has waged with such great success for so long.
I tend to agree with DB. Whether it is funny or not is not the point. It is who it is directed against that shows the political bias.
If I understand the Mail piece correctly (I stopped reading it when I got to what Toksvig’s joke was and cracked up), the complaint wasn’t about political bias but rather the (near) use of the ‘c’ word?
Hippie,
Yes, that is another point. No complaint about the target as it is only the nasty Tories.
Agree with DB.
It is, at best, mediocre as wit. However you look at it, regardless of the offensiveness of the specific word involved, it isn’t pure comedic invention put in and relished for the sake of humour. It is primarily for a political purpose and as such, it is used in a typically Beeboid biased way: they wouldn’t use / imply such an extreme derogatory term about the Labour Party or the Greens, Lib Dems etc. It is bile and political bias.
As well, the fact that it references pretty transparently a word that does give offence to a lot of people, is completely overriden for the sake of this political purpose. When the editor “justifies” it by saying that it will delight the audience, as I see it, he is dismissing those in the audience who will be offended by the use of a reference to that word in favour of those whom he considers will be delighted by such name-calling of the Tories and the opportunity to score a hit at Tory cuts. He is putting his political agenda and those to whom it is targeted above anyone else who may be concerned about the word, the politics or the tactics involved.
I don’t think it is for the sake of comedy but for the sake of the politics.
As well, it coarsens and debases comedy, broadcasting and public discourse but he doesn’t care about that.
I wonder if it delighted the Beeboid’s mother, if he has one ?
I’d like to know what jokes actually did get cut because the producer “knew” that not enough of his audience would like it.
About time this lot of lefties were performance reviewed. Time on stage-typical audience-laughs per miniute(no canned stuff either that we call the Marcus Meter )
Rhona Cameron has made no-one laugh to my knowledge, yet is able to get that monicker…as if she does the same job as Les Dawson did.
This goes through to Hardy,Steel and Thomas who couldn`t fill the Nags Head in Islington were it not for the “as heard on News Quiz” bit emblazopned on their posters. The BBC really needs to get some comedians instead of their student chums that sold the Socialist Worker way back with the commissioning editors.
What about a name quota?-the BBC clearly has a thing about employing Justins ,Jeremys and Gavins-and this has got to be illegal. Need to cull them-as in cull.
Now That would be delightful-and no double barrel names either like this comedy genius that none of us even knew had a perch at the BBC until today.
Tell you what I did find funny, after a little sidebar surf today…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/correspondents/tomfeilden/
‘He should have been part of the Sony award winning team that covered the launch of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2008, but sadly the giant atom smasher broke shortly before the awards ceremony and the judges looked elsewhere.’
Now I think i see where I have been going wrong with my CV updates all these years.
I wonder what he graduated from Sussex Uni in? Great ‘shoulds’ in history?
The actual answer is proving elusive…
http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/about/99#O1
This bit from the interviewer ought to send chills down your spine:
When I’ve interviewed newsprint journalists they say that they come in the morning and they actually listen to the Today programme and take their stories from there! But you have to get your stories out in the mornings.
Thank you sir!
That was my first question too-what is his degree in?
Loved too the BBC mindset-top billing goes to his interviewing Gorbachev on a Cornish train for Radio 1 as one of his “achievements”…Do I see a Frost Nixon rewrite to cover his “breakthrough pastie” moment in St Ives? Raisa spoke of little else those last few difficult months I`m sure.
Note too that “he would have won a Sony but sadly...brilliant! In Beebworld there is no harsher way of showing compassion…as in “sadly, the S.S failed to keep to their word in Lidice etc”…Poor Tom-never without some Blu Tack to stick magnets back on his fridge by way of training should it all arise again.
Still these two stories will impress the Bacons, Derbyshires mightily-the coming breed of Beebists! I`ll let you guess which story above is “amazing” and which one is “awesome”!
Don`t worry Tom-in Beebland there`s an award ceremony every week or more…there`ll be another soon…TV Quicks next ,if you can find your botox..sorry…tie!
The BBC’s ‘Dyke Reich’ ought to try using the ‘c’ word outside their cosy, trendy, little bubble – like in some of the pubs I frequent. In short order, they’d be told to ‘piss off back to Hampstead & stop fouling the air.’ Their like toddlers who’ve just discovered their genitals, & can’t stop telling everybody. Infantile.
Cassandra: “These people are so far up their own arse they can lick their tonsils from the back.”
Jarwill: “Their like toddlers who’ve just discovered their genitals, & can’t stop telling everybody. “
That’s two excellent quotes now. š
I thought it was now compulsary for BBC presenters to describe the Conservative Party and its members thus.
When I used the “joke” as a topic header on the Radio 4 Message Board before its demise asking what listeners thought of it, it was fairly quickly removed.
No double standards there then!.
The “joke” was also repeated on BBC television “comedy show.
If it had been a Hardie quip maybe, but to actually put it in “the chairman’s script” says it all.
In a “national” broadcaster with the BBC’s general responsibilities, the following should have been sacked :
The odious and unfunny grating-voice Toksvig
The person who wrote that line
The producer and anyone else responsible for leaving it in
The jobsworth’s at the BBC and the BBC Trust who try to defend it.
In most well-run organisations it is an offence for an employee to bring it into disrepute. That is exactly the effect of the actions of those above.
Well, we’ve seen from the blogs of the likes of Richard Leeming that it seems Beeboids feel that they can write what rantings they like while badged as Beeboid employee, even though it brings their employer into disrepute. Twitter also shows numerous examples of the same thing.
I wonder what rude words those license fee parasites will use when we all go on strike? It appears that half the population of Ulster have been withholding their TV poll tax contributions for years, owing to the BBC being the IRA’s propaganda wing (with Sinn Fein playing just a minor role). And judging by Capita’s increasingly SS-like tactics in trying to extract license fee money from us on the mainland – fake solicitor’s letters and all – this reluctance to pay is probably spreading elsewhere too. How I’d love to see a streamlined, privatised BBC sack audience-losers like Toksvig and all the other champagne socialists. They are an intrinsic part of what’s wrong with this country, and I want to see them begging for income support, on telly, and then being forced onto some workfare scheme cleaning out that pig-sty you see in the Hannibal Lecter film. There is of course a possibility that the pigs might run away from a chromosomal monster like Toksvig, but if she was to be tied up first – next to Captain Hook and George Galloway…
If this is true, then maybe David Vance would benefit from moving house?
(No offense meant, DV, but you know it makes sense.) =-X
As reported in The Telegraph, one of the Beeboid Corporation’s “stars” (Chris Evans) seems to agree with me about the coarsening of comedy:
Evans said the changes were needed because comedy on radio and television had become too coarse. “What has happened since [Sachsgate] is very, very good but also a complete pain in the backside,” he said.
“It means comedy has become much more sophisticated but the compliance culture that has come in since, you wouldn’t believe it. The compliance department of the BBC is so extensive it’s an unbelievable nightmare.
“Sometimes you come up with an idea and the compliance you have to go through is so great that you just say, ‘Let’s not bother’.”
He told an audience at the Telegraph Hay Festival that comedy had been on a “downward spiral” for some time.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/8553938/Hay-Festival-2011-BBC-compliance-culture-a-nightmare-says-Chris-Evans.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/8553938/Hay-Festival-2011-BBC-compliance-culture-a-nightmare-says-Chris-Evans.html
The most recommended comment rather nails it.
What i found as interesting was the ‘reply’, demanding such a critique cease and desist. Funny if not a tad spooky in terms of mindset.
Then the ‘back-up’ accusing other broadcasters of ‘rigging’ the recommends.
Like tens of thousands of staff could not be rallied to muster a few more than two on Twitter if most BBC employees were either not in Tuscany for the weekend or deep down knew they were beyond the pale.
hence the rather inconvenient ratings.
Here’s the truth, folks: no one at the Beeb cares what Sandi T. says. They feed off our anger. They simply despise us. They are the chosen ones. They think we’re idiots. They DON’T CARE. The question is: what do we do about it?
True. They believe themselves to be the nomenklatura, floating above the rest of us because they think the correct thoughts and are part of the elite. As we’ve seen, it’s in their DNA.
What we need, Louis, is to take a leaf out of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – a book well-dramatised by a very different BBC in 1979. Instead of a mole at the heart of MI6, we need moles at the heart of the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation, digging away at the foundations of the White City Kremlin. Covert agents that can blow Beeboid operations, undermine their cocksure morale, create factions, turn Beeboid against Beeboid, & blow the whistle on the corruption, criminal profligacy, & rank political bias within the monstrous biodome of unreality. Who knows? In a future putsch, the Montagues might liquidate the Naughties, as they slept in their splendid beds of entitlement. The way to go.
Sadly, Jarwill101, I am now retired from the place so I can’t help there. However I see that Bel Mooney (a leftie herself) seems to be on our side on this one. This is a link to Monday’s Daily Mail (which the beeboids HATE!)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1394679/BEL-MOONEY-Prime-time-smut-vile-obscenities-Radio-4-smug-elite-sneer-silent-majority.html
.. and these would be the same ‘cuts’ that see UK Government spending continuing to rise overall?
Has anyone else noticed that since the election Toksvig’s membership of the Lib Dems seems to have gone down the memory hole ? For a couple of years before impartiality went out of the window as Sandi told us how wonderful the party were and what a fantastic forward thinking leader they have. It all seems to have stopped now – Can’t think why š
Beeboid quoted in today’s Telegraph. The News Quiz ” is aimed at an adult audience “.
“Adult”? Hah! That word must have a special meaning in Beeboidland. As I noted when I introduced this story on the Open thread of 3 June:
More insight into Beeboid mentality:
A weak “joke” by Sandi Toksvig who referred to putting the n into cuts is deemed by the Beeboid in charge of editing to be something that would delight listeners to the programme, so any offence given to other listeners doesn’t count.
It seems that even the oldies in Beeboidland are rather juvenile – and awfully short of wit and humour if they thought they couldn’t afford to drop a fairly obvious and not very funny crack. Could it be that their desire to promote an agenda and score a political point overcame their judgement both as to its comic value and its necessity to the programme?
I was thinking particularly of the commissioning editor (who called it delightful) being, I believe, aged 58. So they aren’t all recent media studies graduates, though on this showing, they might as well be.
Oops! The para beginning with the bit in bold is meant to be in italics too, as part of the quotation from my original comment.
An “adult audience” – that would be one locked in perpetual adolescence with a sense of entitlement. Adults are those who earn their own keep.
“Prime-time smut, vile obscenities on Radio 4 and a smug elite who sneer at the silent majority”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1394679/BEL-MOONEY-Prime-time-smut-vile-obscenities-Radio-4-smug-elite-sneer-silent-majority.html#ixzz1OTrIugMu
Remember when Carol Thatcher said the ‘n’ word off air? She was sacked immediately.
It’s never far from my thoughts whenever I hear a Beeboid trying to justify and pretend some other insult or abuse is nothing to write home about.
The news quiz is the BBCs sacred cow, and there is just no point in complaining. several months ago i wrote to complain about the relentless and often abusive anti Tory tone of the programme. I eventually received a reply acknowledging my concerns about the inappropriateness of the programmes theme music. At that point I realised there was just no point in continuing…… Toskvig is bombproof, a left wing lesbian from another country, ticks every box there is.
John,
No it doesn’t. She is not black nor a muslim.
What an awful thought – if she ticked those boxes too she’d be organising jihads on all channels. Mind you at least she wouldn’t say c*nt any more.