Author Archives: Andrew

Natasha Kerplunksky, the BBC’s only newsreader named after a racehorse, came out with another example of BBC Weird Phenomena introducing last night’s Six O’Clock News (256Kbps, WMV):

“WPC Murder: Police say WPC Nisha Patel Nasri may have been killed by her own kitchen knife”

Watch out for those self activating knives. Everyone else who mentioned this tragic incident was savvy enough to say ‘with’ instead of ‘by’.

Later in the bulletin John Sweeney presented a moving report about a couple who’ve had their three children forcibly adopted in circumstances that appear less than clear cut (starting 17’20” on the link above) – an example of good BBC journalism – powerful and original, rather than mediocre diary-based stuff.

Update: For those bemused by the Najinski reference above, it’s a bit of an obscure in-joke, inspired by a very funny comment last year, to wit:

Anyway, the Beeb’s naffed-offness, if any, with the Shuttle mission was that they had especially extended their weak Breakfast show on Monday to cover the Shuttle’s return, only to be left with a bit of a gap to fill – a gap that is even wider than Najinsky’s* inane grin 🙂

* named after the famous race-horse, Natasha Kaplinsky – famous for never winning races because she keeps pulling to the left, but, was, by all accounts, a good ride for her partner in last year’s Strictly Horse Dancing show.

: BBC Views Online have just revealed that the man they mistakenly interviewed live on BBC News 24 in place of Guy Kewney is, in fact, Guy Goma, an applicant for a “data support cleanser” job. According to the BBC:

The mix-up occurred when a producer went to collect the expert from the wrong reception in BBC Television Centre in West London.

That’s a BBC euphemism for “the wrong kind of snow“. A BBC spokeswoman said “This has turned out to be a genuine misunderstanding”, in other words, “a momentous cock-up”!

Still, reassuringly for Tellytax-payers, they say “We’ve looked carefully at our guest procedures and will take every measure to ensure this doesn’t happen again”, until the next time, that is.

Meanwhile, in other BBC cock-up news, almost literally in this case, have a listen to this gem of a BBC Radio Leicester record dedication, courtesy of YouTube:

Okay, let’s get to our first, straightaway, to our first dedication:

“Dear Chris, Please say a big hello to Connie Lingus, who’s 69 on Tuesday. She’ll be enjoying my meat and two veg. on Sunday at 12. Wish her all the very best, and tell her I look forward to seeing her when she comes, thanks ever so much”,

says Ivan R. Don, and he says, “Please say hello to Bill as well”, and that comes from Ivan, going out to Connie in Thurnby Lodge, here in Leicestershire.

Superb! Where does the BBC get these people from?

Update: Re. a query about the veracity of the above clip, it certainly seems genuine – it was reported in The Sun, DJ boob on the Beeb (so it must be true!), and is also mentioned in a copy of a press story here.

Update: Daily Mail: Revealed: The identity of the BBC’s latest star. Guy Kewney: That “Guy” – he really is a Guy, and not a cab driver, either!

Update: More details emerge in The Times, The interview went pretty well. So, have I got the job?:

“Poor soul, he was nervous and just did as he was told,” Mr Waldman wrote on the BBC news weblog, which can be read only by BBC staff.

Mr Waldman wrote on the blog: “Harassed producer sets off at a brisk pace to get his guest from ‘reception’. You’ve guessed: wrong reception. The wrong Guy is asked three questions, with toe-curling results”.

Please use this thread, and this thread alone, for off-topic comments, preferably BBC related. Please keep comments on other threads on the topic of that particular post. N.B. this is not an invitation for off-topic comments – the idea is to maintain order and clarity. Thank you.

– from today’s Sunday Times:

Commercial companies – from giant ITV, Emap and Yahoo down to minnows such as Island FM on Guernsey – complain that relentless BBC expansion is hurting private- sector enterprise in areas from parish-pump television to magazines, the internet and classical-music publishing.

Lobby groups representing the radio and local-newspaper industries have sent letters to Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, in the past few days, setting out their concerns about the BBC’s ambitions and about the way it uses its licence-fee revenue.

They plan to increase pressure in the run-up to the government’s decision later this year on the next licence-fee settlement.

Tom Moloney, chief executive of Emap, the magazine publisher and radio-station operator, complained last week: “The reason this situation has occurred is that the BBC is overfunded and is therefore looking for things to do.”

Do read the whole thing.

BBC News 24 cocked things up big time last Monday when they interviewed respected technology commentator Guy Kewney on the outcome of the Apple Computer vs. Apple Music case. Except, rather than place Mr. Kewney in front of lightweight Karen Bowerman, they chose his taxi driver for her to interview instead.

Bowerman proceeded to interview the taxi driver, whose Frank Spencer style expressions, when he realises their mistake, are priceless! Gamely though he had a go at answering her questions, while she, alert as ever, presses on (that said, for all her faults, she remains far preferable to squealy, squealy twelve-year old Julia Caesar, another so-called business correspondent).

Watch out for the cabbie’s hilarious facial expressions!

This sort of cock-up beggars belief – that all the highly trained and expert BBC staff failed to spot the taxi driver, who looks and sounds nothing like Kewney, a BBC regular, earlier. Do none of them watch their own news programming? Do none of them have the gumption to tell the difference between a taxi-driver and a well known technology expert before they get him live on air?

A handy cut out and keep guide for BBC staffers:
This is a taxi driver, not Guy Kewney.	This is Guy Kewney.

Still, it could have been worse – the mother of all right-on BBC cock-ups remains the Bhopal hoax of December 2004, when the BBC were easily tricked into broadcasting a story they wanted to broadcast by a pair of conmen. For more details of this see my earlier Biased BBC post, Blink and you’ll miss it.

Strangely, whilst this latest cock-up is featured on Raymond Snoddy’s worthwhile Newswatch programme (256Kbps, WMV, or see clip above), it has yet to make an appearance on the BBC’s Newswatch web site, which, we were promised when it launched, all of eighteen months ago, would “publish all mistakes of a serious nature across the BBC’s platforms – TV, radio and on the web – and try to explain what happened“. I expect the BBC Views Online people will attend to this omission in due course, since they’ve already covered a couple of other items from this week’s Newswatch show.

More coverage of this story is available from The Times, BBC falls for ‘expert’ cabbie’s banter, by Jack Malvern.

P.S. If Sky News or ITN had done this I’m sure it would have been mentioned for a day or two on every BBC News programme, with barely concealed mirth, purely in the interests of reporting the news of course!

Update: See also Mail on Sunday: The BBC’s latest star – a baffled cabbie.

Update: It turns out the ‘wrong’ man was a job applicant – see News 24’s ‘wrong Guy’ is revealed above.

BBC Views Online often seems to report unexplained phenomena – for instance, from the last few days, off the top of my head, we have:

• Inquiry as stolen car kills woman – I presume the car stole itself and ran the woman over, rather than a car thief (or suspected car thief even) being responsible;

   

• A 15-year-old boy is being prosecuted in connection with the case of a girl who fell pregnant at the age of 11 – did he trip her up then? Girls obviously need to be careful in case they fall over and get up pregnant;

   

• A woman was killed and several people were injured when a stolen bus went on a five-mile rampage through Dublin – naughty, naughty bus – don’t do that again.

I’m sure readers of Biased BBC can spot many more unexplained phenomena reported by the BBC. Let us know in the comments – and mind how you go – it’s a strange world out there!

To improve the readability of the comment threads please use this thread, and this thread alone, for off-topic comments, until such time as another open thread is started. Please keep comments on the other threads on the topic at hand. Please note, this is not an invitation for off-topic comments – it’s merely an attempt to keep order. Thank you.

Viewers of this evening’s BBC News were treated to a Hugh Pym report on Chip and Pin card fraud centred around a small number of Shell petrol stations (256Kbps, WMV format).

Near the end Pym appears next to a till with a card terminal to wrap up his report – strangely though not a till in a Shell petrol station! No, Pym manages to get himself downstairs to the BBC Shop in Television Centre, where he lounges, quite coincidentally, next to a prominent display of signed copies, no less, of the new book, Blood & Sand, by his colleague, Frank “Help me, I’m a muslim“ Gardner.

Still, I suppose the nearest Shell service station was at least, er, a mile away, with another six within just a little over two miles!

For those who wish to sample Frank’s rather sorry for himself account of events the book was serialised in The Sunday Times over the last three weeks, The day I was shot, Being Daddy and The sweet joys of Arabia.

Update, May 12th: In response to a couple of comments, I think if I were in Frank’s predicament I would undergo an instant ‘conversion’ to Islam too, but I’d also be quite happy to include that detail in my account of events afterwards. As for feeling sorry for myself, I certainly would, but I’d feel a lot more sorry for poor Mr. Cumbers who didn’t survive to tell the tale – I know which of the two outcomes I’d opt for. To be fair, perhaps this is down to the Sunday Times editing of Frank’s account – if you know different please do comment.

Throughout their coverage of last night’s local election results the oh-so-pleased-with-himself Jeremy Whine repeated, ad-nauseam, the oh-so-clever sequence in the clip above with such enthusiasm he seemed at risk of wetting himself with excitement.

I wonder how many other groups the BBC would dare to depict thus…

For those that can’t play the clip:

“And it will also be the first test for the new LibDim leader, er, LibDem leader, Sir Menzies Campbell…”

Right on sister!