Monday 27 October 2008

Brand, Ross and Sachs

I've been interested by the coverage of the story about Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross leaving obscene messages on the answerphone of 78 year old Andrew "Que?" Sachs in a pre-recorded segment of Brand's Radio 2 show, and then - oh, how my sides ache with laughter - joking about his killing himself on hearing them.

Most of the comment has been critical of Brand and Ross ("Jonathan Ross isn't worth £6,000, let alone £6 million!", etc). Clearly Brand and Ross bear some responsibility and it would be perverse to argue otherwise. But it seems to me that the person who bears the most culpability is the "senior editorial person" at the BBC who cleared the segment for transmission. After all, Ross and Brand were just doing their job of making dirty and bad taste jokes: it's just that in this case they clearly went too far and should have been edited. For the job of this s.e.p. - his or her entire bloody function in the workplace - is to make decisions in situations like this. And this joker, this halfwit, listened to this segment, in which two BBC broadcasters commit a prima facie criminal offence, and then joke about the elderly victim's suicide - and said "yup, ok for broadcast with no cuts". 

Oh, and don't forget, if you're a licence-payer, you're paying this moron's salary. Grrrrr.

4 comments:

kg-b said...

'Senior editorial person' who is probably about 25 goes up to the Great Jonathan Ross and says 'err not sure if that's tasteful.' What do we thing 'Wrossy's' reaction will be? Sorry but he isn't paid millions just to suck up to Ricky Gervais on a Friday night. He should have gained some kind of instinct, understanding and perspective by now.

Jonny Mac said...

Well, if the sep didn't have the authority to prevent the broadcast, then obviously the blame is shifted up the ladder. But I stick to the view that the biggest fuck up here is editorial. You could say that Ross and Brand were doing just what they're paid to. They have the safety net of editing. Take away effective editing, and they will, at some point, come unstuck.

Having said all that, I agree wossy shd have some kind of instinct etc by now, and he has come out of this looking like an immature, nasty piece of work.

dNo said...

I am impressed that 18,000 people have complained to the BBC. How many of those do you think actually listened to the broadcast? Surely anyone who tunes in to Mr Brand's weekly filth-rants knows what they are going to get, and i cant see more than a dozen of them being upset by this. So i disagree with JMP on this one, the biggest travesty is that 18,000 people feel the need to write to someone to complain about something they have no first hand knowledge of, and get the result they want. And now Gordon Brown is involved???? Must mean the financial stuff is ok now then?
As JMP said, Ross and Brand are paid to be naughty schoolboys, they need to apologise privately to Mr Sachs (maybe do some gardening for him or something) and everyone else needs to be reminded that as they dont listen to the bloody shows they dont need to get involved!

kg-b said...

I kind off agree with dno here. It seems to have been massively blown out of proportion. I have done my best to avoid the story but I understand Sachs' grand-daughter and the 'victim' of the rant has got well-paid exclusive with a tabloid. hmm.
My earlier point to JM is that if you are in an organisation that puts a huge monetary value on an individual, then it creates a dynamic when you have no other choice to hold them responsible when something goes wrong. But realise it is a periphery one and sounds a bit wanky management textbook.