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They're blowing the whole Andrew Sachs' thing out of proportion by the way

Good old Ade.
 
I wonder if any reporters tried to get into Ross's Halloween party in costume?
 
Here's a preposterous comparison from the Telegraph:

Telegraph said:
"When the Abu Ghraib atrocities against Iraqi prisoners filled our media, people rightly noted that the torment consisted not in physical pain, but in humiliation.

The humiliation was increased by photographing the acts. The torturers thought that what they did was funny. They were arrested, dismissed from the US armed services and imprisoned.

Jonathan Ross was doing essentially the same thing. He thought it was funny to use his power to torment someone mentally, and to let other people witness the torment."
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...11/01/do0102.xml&posted=true&_requestid=45286

CaptainWacky said:
I actually can't believe what I just saw on ITV news as the headline: the press camped outside Ross's home, where he's having his annual Halloween party for local CHILDREN, the reporter says "Ross obviously showing no remorse!" or something to that effect.

So, what, they're saying he should have told the kids "sorry, no party this year, I swore on Manuel's answer phone two weeks ago!"
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I saw that too and was absolutely astounded. I can't believe they can get away with such biased reporting. And it was the headline for the FOURTH day running!!
 
Down with that sort of thing!
 
Fuddlemiff said:
Here's a preposterous comparison from the Telegraph:



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...11/01/do0102.xml&posted=true&_requestid=45286



I saw that too and was absolutely astounded. I can't believe they can get away with such biased reporting. And it was the headline for the FOURTH day running!!
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What an utter McCarthyist pile of tripe that article was. Well done, Johnny, you've found the biggest pile of piffle anyone's written on this whole non-story!
 
What are the odds my comment gets published?

What an absolute trough of knee-jerk reactionary drivel this article is. Whilst what Brand & Ross did was indefensible, Brand had the decency to fall on his sword.

Vilify Ross all you like - I can't stand him, but to draw comparisons between this sorry non-story, and amongst others:

- The Nazi cleansing of Jews
- The torture of prisonsers in Abu Ghraib
- The Romans throwing Christians to the lions

Get a grip, Charles Moore! This is the sort of reactionary nonsense that caused this story to become a media storm in the first instance.

If you're going to practice rank hackery, at least remember to pop your brain in first.
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Oh, and the Mock the Week show he refers to on Wednesday was a repeat of a New Year's 2007 episode. Nice way to drag that in too...
 
He also claims to have listened to the broadcast in full, which means that he's either lying, or completely stupid when he says that they called Andrew Sachs specifically to torment him about the Slut. I don't like how it turned out, but from listening to it it's pretty clear that Russell started off with good intentions.
 
Sachs was supposed to be on the show so they called him to ask where he was and Ross blurted out the "he fucked your grandaughter!" thing to look cool in front of Russell. It wasn't a plan or anything. Okay, they shouldn't have called up another three times and sang an apology song. BUT THEY DIDN'T GAS NO KURDS.
 
Kind of ironic really when Sach's character was kind of insulting to the entire country of spain.
 
Did he ever apologise for that!?
 
Come to think of it, I dont think he did.

Collosal double standard!
 
If anything!

I am utterly nonplussed by the Russell Brand-Jonathan Ross fallout. What’s with the insanely disproportionate reaction? Grovel a much-needed apology, by all means, then grovel some more, but why the need for ritual disembowelling?

Brand “resigns”; Ross is suspended without pay for three months; the controller Lesley Douglas, who is revered by her creative stable, falls on her sword; and Radio 2 self-harms in order to assuage 30,000 members of the public - a few streets’ worth - because two clever, talented men made a grotesquely tasteless joke, for which they apologised profusely - if late in the day.

The corporation’s desire to show moral backbone has left it looking spineless. The millions of viewers and listeners who didn’t complain are left deprived of the entertainment that they, too, pay their licence fee for. What on earth is going on?

Let’s just rewind. Two broadcasters with huge fan bases, hired because they are edgy, motormouthed and volatile, make a series of revolting but impromptu (that is, not cruelly premeditated) jokes. The jokes are directed at a 78-year-old man. It’s not nice. But, first: when did the public start equating the elderly with helpless babies?

Andrew Sachs has been completely infantilised throughout this saga, as though he were a simple-minded toddler rather than a man who has spent his life working in show business and is perhaps not unfamiliar with its more robust excesses. But no: here he is, presented as a doddery old gramps who must be protected from the big mean boys on his answering machine, as though 78 years of experience - not all of it spent doing crosswords by the fire, presumably - count for nothing. I find this weird and not terribly realistic.

Also, if my granddaughter was a self-styled Satanic Slut who earned her living by staging peculiar bloodletting scenarios for pervs (Cheerleader Massacre, anyone?) and defined herself on her MySpace page as a “groupie” who loved “partying”, then being told, no matter how coarsely, that she had slept with some celeb would be the least of my worries, frankly.

The granddaughter, Georgina Baillie, has signed up with Max Clifford and obligingly posed en déshabillé to emphasise the terrible ordeal that Sachs has suffered. She has called Brand and Ross “sickos” and says “justice has been served”. Really? For the millions who downloaded Brand’s podcast every week? For the millions whose weekends were made joyous by Ross? Or for one G Baillie (Ms) who was maybe a bit peeved when Brand, having had his way, failed to bombard her with marriage proposals? Besides, unless Brand is psychic, he wouldn’t have known she was Sachs’s granddaughter unless she told him herself, presumably as some sort of chat-up line.

Second thing: Ross and Brand were behaving like a pair of hysterical teenagers, egging each other on, extemporising wildly, riffing with the joke until it got completely out of control, as though they were round a kitchen table rather than in a studio. This was extremely stupid of them.

However: their brand of humour, which no one is forced to listen to, is what audiences tune in for in vast numbers. Editing the programme so that it doesn’t provoke outrage is what the producers are supposed to do. The failure here was an executive one: someone from the show, which was prerecorded, contacted Sachs, played him the segment and asked if it was okay to broadcast it. Sachs said he rather thought it wasn't. “It’s a bit crude, isn’t it?” he said.

For reasons best known to themselves, the show’s producers decided to ignore his views. This is not Ross’s or Brand’s fault: their “joke” was vile but the buck rolls on.

Third, and most crucial, thing: what lies at the centre of this sorry saga is misogyny. None of it would have happened if Ross and Brand displayed - or were asked to display - even an iota of respect for women. Instead, both men have made part of their living out of treating women - wives and mothers excluded - as though they were pieces of meat. This can be very funny but it sticks in the craw.

Ross has an Achilles’ heel: he is a marvellous interviewer of men, but reduces every single female interviewee to meat status. Basically, his whole shtick boils down to “I’d do you”. Unless the woman in question is ancient or deformed, Ross crushes any spark of opinion until said woman can be squashed back into the box labelled “totty”.

Brand, whose issues with sex addiction are well documented, has a similar problem. I interviewed him last summer. He was, shall we say, attentive, rather distractingly so as I sat trying to take notes and keep the conversation on track. My interview appeared in due course.

Three weeks ago I got an e-mail from a friend suggesting that I listen to that week’s radio show podcast. Now, I didn’t go to Brand’s house batting my eyelashes or bandying killer chat-up lines (“My grandpa was Coco the Clown”, maybe); I went to do my job. I was therefore taken aback to find myself named on air as a prelude to Brand discussing my bosoms with, surreally, Noel Gallagher from Oasis, who insistently asked: “Did you sleep with her?”, a question that caused Brand to speculate in some detail about what sleeping with me might have been like. None of this was mean or cruel, but it was out of order and reductive: woman, ergo piece of meat, fair game, punchline, nonperson.

In Ross’s and Brand’s world, it is assumed that all women are gagging for a bit of the old trouser goodness. I don’t necessarily blame them for this: many male celebrities do indeed find it to be so and this assumption happens to be shared by most men - it's just that most men are more discreet about airing their misogyny, because they have normal lives and engage with normal women in normal places, such as offices. Ross, Brand and others operate from ivory towers, no matter how populist their appeal.

The BBC’s failure was in not identifying the alarming propensity of its two presenters for galloping, off-the-scale sexism and in making no attempt to rein it in.

As the dust settles, Brand is in America, doing stand-up shows and making a movie. Ross is at home in north London, down but not remotely out. Sachs has accepted everyone’s apologies and considers the matter closed. The real casualty is Douglas, Radio 2’s former controller - and a woman. Funny, that.
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See, this woman didn't make a fuss about Russ talking about her tits! (That's probably enough articles for now.)
 
ONE MORE since it's David Mitchell...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/02/bbc-british-identity-ross-brand

This has been a week in which Britain has come together. Through the mists of economic and environmental collapse, we have stumbled upon a beacon of hope that, while briefly setting fire to our trousers, has also lit a path of unity. We have formed a rare national consensus, a determination to stand side by side in the name of something we all believe in and agree upon. Not since the Second World War have we felt such moral certainty, such comforting, righteous anger.

We will let the world know that, if there's one thing our country stands for, it's this: we don't think people should ring up respected actors and say they've had sex with their granddaughters. And not only do we all think that people shouldn't do that, we also all firmly believe that when they do, they shouldn't then put it on the radio. Everyone thinks this now - even the people that did it. Brilliant.

Of course the consensus-hating cynics would say that we've merely lathered ourselves into such a hysterical fever that we've spent a week repeating and re-repeating a conclusion so bleedin' obvious that Sybil Fawlty should be answering questions on it on Mastermind. They'd say we've taken a lapse in taste and judgment that was egregious but, by any reasonable definition, not particularly harmful, and which has been apologised for by everyone concerned and turned it into an excuse for a moral crusade.

That, in a country racked by social and economic problems that cannot be blamed on a couple of celebrities, we've grasped at a tiny issue purely for the assuaging effect of its ethical clarity. That we've allowed some people to disguise their envy and rage at two men's success and wealth as concern for the feelings of a much-loved elderly actor. But those cynics are just killjoys who won't accept what a fantastic step forward for our civilisation we've collectively made. It's right up there with when we all insightfully concluded that it's a shame when a princess dies in a car crash.

I'm sure we can now move on to even bolder collective assertions: 'Kids shouldn't ring doorbells and then run away'; 'Post Office closures in rural areas cause widespread inconvenience'; 'Donkey homelessness is a crying shame.' Human homelessness is a bit more ambiguous, so it's probably best to steer clear of that. I mean the humans concerned might have been unruly at school or taken heroin - before you know it, they'll be on the radio claiming to have given Yootha Joyce's great-nephew a blowjob - but donkeys should definitely have somewhere to live. And I bet there are 30,000 people just begging to complain about any contention that they shouldn't.

Because it's been a particularly lovely week for those 30,000 and rising who've found the time in their undoubtedly busy schedules to thank the BBC for taking the trouble to offend them. Obviously, 29,998 of them missed the broadcast, but thanks to the miracle of YouTube and our dispassionate, fact-printing media, they've all had the opportunity to catch up and get their fix of what offends them.

They're an odd bunch, these people who actually enjoy being offended. Some would call them perverts but I, in common with much of the media, think that in our new inclusive society, their fetish should be indulged. In fact, live and let live, it should be celebrated. It's harmless, if incredibly weird, and they're an important and growing demographic. In fact, I'm thinking of pitching a TV show specifically targeted at them called Why Don't You All Go and Fuck Yourselves!? I imagine it'll be a hit.

And the fun doesn't stop there. As well as us all being able to hold close to us the warming thought that we shouldn't leave rude answerphone messages, a significant minority of 'liberals' (you know, musicians, comedians, pornographers and the like - I count myself in this group) can be further comforted by their own little consensusette that too much fuss has been made. 'Too much is being written about it,' we write about it. 'It's ridiculous - no one mentions anything else!' we cry, not mentioning anything else.

The truth is that this whole farrago has been a hell of a lot of fun for all but about four people in the entire world and that's more than can be said about the earthquake in Pakistan or the fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo or the terrorist bombings in India.

But all good things come to an end and, in this case, as in so many, the joy dies with the involvement of politicians. Apart from the fact that you'd think Gordon Brown and David Cameron would want to seem too busy to concern themselves with a Radio 2 show that went wrong, it's never a good idea for politicians to get involved with comedy. From Margaret Thatcher's Yes Minister sketch to Tony Blair's 'Am I Bovvered?' appearance, their attempts to associate themselves with humour have generally been awful. The reason for this is that they don't really care what's funny.

Being funny involves taking risks and no politician, except possibly Boris Johnson, can understand why anyone would take the slightest risk of public disapproval in order to get a laugh. They're about power; they don't understand the instinct to amuse and that's why Vince Cable's pretty unfunny remark about Gordon Brown being transformed 'from Stalin to Mr Bean' has led to his being acclaimed a great parliamentary wit. Well, it might make them fall about in the Commons, but it would barely raise a smirk at Wimbledon, where even a pigeon perching on the net gets guffaws.

Now the risks taken in Russell Brand's offending radio broadcast are pretty baffling, it must be said, and what happened was wrong, as both Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand accept. But the instinct to take risks is vital to being funny and is why Ross and Brand are so successful and I'm confident will continue to be. Comedians can't self-censor before their every remark or they won't get laughs - politicians must or they won't get votes.

The latter could not be worse placed to judge the successes and failures of the former and if, as a result of this absurd furore, the 'on message' word-watching of politics is imposed on comedy, then we may none of us crack a smile again.
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A good read. Sounds like he might've been planning to go to LA anyway (although not quite so early), so he hasn't fled British shores entirely.
 
He did his radio show from LA quite often.
 
I never used to listen to it even though people kept telling me to. And now it's dead. :(
 
MAHARISHI OBAMA WILL HEAL YOU ALL.
 
With his wand?
 
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