russell brand - C or D?

I think it's paid to the production company to produce his shows, and he walks away with a £6m salary of that.

I thought it was £18m over three years, hence the £6m/yr figure?

Ah, perhaps. But is it to him as salary, or company as production fee?

It has to be the latter.

I'd imagine once you take staff salaries out of it as well as other costs, it's not so impressive.

And Russell Brand wouldn't be a BBC 'employee' as such, would he? He merely works there. I always thought he was a Channel 4 star, anyway.

I imagine that Ross' money is routed through his production company. Generally speaking, this practice is also useful for *cough* tax purposes.

And in place of "Friday Night With Schoolboy Pranks", it's the movie "Speed".

ITV News leading with this and loving it

No-one watches ITV News for actual news though.

Thursday's Sun headline: BRAND YELLED "QUE?" IN BED

Has anyone done the "Eeez not love rat, eeez hamster" headline yet?

― Carrie Bradshaw Layfield (The stickman from the hilarious 'xkcd' comics), Wednesday, 29 October 2008

arf!

I didn't think anybody was actually offended by this (other than by the fact it wasn't funny)

isn't it just a mixture of schadenfreude, ross-hate, 4chan-style ambient celebanthropy, and internet co-ordinated b&s/rick astley system gaming? I mean, I know I complained (as did my little bro)

You ACTUALLY complained? I assumed you were joking.

I didn't think anybody was actually offended by this

Older viewers give their thoughts

It's like the Pistols on Grundy all over again - but with pictures!

I'd imagine once you take staff salaries out of it as well as other costs, it's not so impressive.

sure

Depressing. Thoroughly depressing.

A daft little prank on a minority listenership late night radio show which would have bothered no one had the tabloids not blown it up into a Good Story becomes the straw which breaks the BBC's back.

And now the degrading spectacle of the coward Director-General asking Paul Dacre how brown he'd like his tongue, sir.

If we're going to censure or dismiss people for indulging in certain brands (ahem) of humour that some might not like then we might as well rename this country Iraq and have done with it.

INGSOC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7698988.stm

More famouser people says what they think: Eamon Holmes gets it closer than most. Andrew castle manages to say almost nothing. Lois Walsh doesn't like JRoss much, it seems.

i think we should drop bombs on the bbc for this gross breach of freedom and their weapon of ross destruction

The general "oh he's had this coming for a LONG time" cackling is extremely distasteful.

No denunication of the Mail on Sunday or the Sun, of course.

A Director-General with a spine would have laughed off thugs like Dacre and Wade, seen things in a proper perspective and left well alone.

27,000 complaints now, no doubt all from the type of people who sit in front of the TV or radio and wait to be offended.

And Ms Baillie has a nice new career.

Isn't Britain wonderful?

sit in front of the newspaper, more like.

I'm presuming that this evening's edition of Never Mind The Buzzcocks, featuring R Brand as guest captain, will be "postponed."

Bet it's not.

Loving how all the papers are all united in publishing "BBC FILTH MUST END NOW" headlines.

It's been replaced by one with James Corden as guest captain. I can only assume nothing offensive will be said about anyone on that, or on the Graham Norton show afterwards. xpost

Will be interesting-ish to see what Hislop makes of it all on HIGNFY tomorrow.

Actually, with guest host Tom Baker, I can't see it being anything other than excruciatingly horrible.

why is there only a system for taking complaints and no system for taking supporting arguments? is paying your licence the only kind of support, until you decide to complain about it? oh you have a teevee, you must be in favor of our radio programs, until you write in and say you're not, in which case, thank you for continuing to pay for socialized teevee, hopefully the person who you don't like quits in shame.

this is almost worse than when congress holds hearings about fucking baseball

Yes, welcome to the lovely, blanded out BBC where no one ever does or says anything that offends anyone else for fear of some saddo in a bedsit who's run out of Kleenex ringing in to "complain."

Just like in the olden days.

The Mail to-day...

Lest we forget: Or what the BBC won't let you hear....

We apologise to readers who may be offended by the explicit and disturbing language used. But we think it is important to know exactly the sort of material these presenters thought so funny.

Followed by yet another airing of the full transcript.

Yeah, but think about it:

Pre the so-called 'liberalisation', any slight reference to a rude word would result in hundreds of complaints, and 'action' taken. It wasn't that long ago (was it? reassure me) that Shaun Ryder was banned specifically by ch4 charter from ever appearing live again. (and that was after the 'Patrick Cox shoes' incident - did the 'pretty vacant' come later?)

Now, it's perfectly alright to swear as long as you are a TV chef.

Sex, swearing, all fine now, nobody (well, relatively few) bother complaining.

That's why it's taken so long to generate a head of steam about this issue: the people who'd not bother (and in actuallity, aren't that bothered) about complaining suddenly feel enfranchised (that a word?) to take up their phones and/or commentboxes and join in.

Personally, I have more of an issue about TV 'detective'/'police' dramas that always seem to involve rapes and/or grisly murders as if it's all in a days life. That's more responsible for knife crime than people actually carrying knives, I reckons.

I get to the point of saying "we done with this subject/thread now?" but still the outside media carry it on further, so I guess we're not.

When's the Pope issuing a statement?

Or what the BBC won't let you hear....

They taken it off 'iplayer'?

I didn't notice but the Mail has the bits that WERE NOT EVEN broadcast.

I read the transcript: It's a bit funny, in a sort of tragic inevitability way. It's not massively oppressive. About how far through were the pair in that sort of "bollox, we're fucked now" mind?

It would only have been on iPlayer for a week after broadcast

xxpost

did anyone kick their PC in?

It is true that the right-wing anti-BBC campaigners who want to privatize everything are bad and hypocritical and dangerous to Britain and the world.

But it is also true that Ross and Brand are scum and should not be allowed on the BBC.

Where are the 27,000 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission about the Daily Mail publishing knowingly offensive material? Why has Paul Dacre not been suspended or dismissed from his post as editor of the Daily Mail for peddling filth?

Oh yes, I forgot - It's A Good Story.

I don't think you can say 'fuck' on tv before 9pm, which was the issue with Ryder and Evans wasn't it?

I think the printing of material that wasn't broadcast might warrant a complaint.

xps

and let us not forget it was because of JRoss and RBrand that caused ASachs the trauma of being hounded by the press outside his own home... Of course, his granddaughter hasn't caused it by giving interviews to the Sun about how she was callously shagged etc...

Clarkson and his cronies and George Lamb are all scum also. They should not be allowed on the BBC either.

xp there is a suspicion that RBrand told JRoss that he'd had sex with the girl - Off-air and unrecorded. How long until that conversation is imagined and reported?

xp again: Is GLamb on the BBC?

But Georgina Baillie, 23, said that despite his ladies’ man reputation, he was a “disappointment” in bed.

Not much detail, The Sun must have been disappointed.

I think the unnecessary printing of material that was broadcast to a small, specialised audience spreads poison and should warrant substantial disciplinary action.

Everyone makes tasteless jokes in pubs.

But if these were overheard, written down and published in mass circulation newspapers it would qualify as spreading of hateful material.

If the person who made the joke in the first place was sacked from their job and/or investigated by the police as a result of someone else publishing remarks that were never meant to be published or go beyond the pub table in question then this country might as well vote in a Nazi dictatorship and be honest about it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081722/Georgina-Baillie-Russell-Brand-obsessed-Fawlty-Towers-grandfather-bed.html

(will let you decide from the URL whether you actually want to read poor Georgina's terrible side of the story)

And Ms Baillie has a nice new career.

Jealous talk.

If they had got through to Sachs for the interview, they still would have ended up mentioning "I fucked yr grand-daughter" right? I wonder how things woyuld have played out then.