russell brand - C or D?

Fawlty Towers box set was £20 I think.

I got it years ago for less with a free tiny car and a tiny model Basil holding a tiny tree branch.

A quick search online says you can get it for less than £15.

let's run a book on who ross's first guests will be when he's back on the beeb in 3 months.

Russell Brand, Ricky Gervais, and... Ricky Gervais

was hoping he'd be sacked :(

The BBC would probably have to give him an enormous fucking payoff if they did that.

ITN going on and on about this, trying to dredge up any bit of dirt and make it stick, hypocritical wankers.

don't care about payoff, just want him out of public eye and his horrible voice out of my ears for good

don't care what ulterior motives any other media groups have or what hypocrisy they're guilty of either - jonathan ross is worse

Brand and Ross are just dicks with big mouths. This whole Daily Mail/ITN "you'd better believe everything we tell you about Britain in the gutter or else" preaching is genuinely harmful in the long term. It tries to hook into the deep seated inferiority complex that many people have in Britain. This is why people are narrow minded and short sighted. This is why people have an undeserved sense of entitlement. This is why people are living beyond their means in a hole they've been encouraged to dig for themselves on easy credit. This is why some kids carry knives and others have no ambition other than to be "famous". Sections of the media, newspapers, magazines, television programmes, politicians, public figures, celebrities, and comedians, have been grinding us down, belittling us, trying to make us "little people".

I'm still totally confused about why the 25-year-old producer of the Brand programme still has his job. And/or why the compliance people who vetted the show still have theirs. The show was pre-recorded. Brand and to a certain extent Ross were hired specifically to be puerile and idiotic. I don't even really blame them, they're just doing what they do.

I thought that the controller said that if the producer was going to be sacked she would resign. And the BBC said 'great, thanks very much - see ya! Rossy - you're off the hook...3 months suspension ok?"

Hmm OK. Seems strange. The producer should really be the one ultimately responsible I'd think.

Really tough questioning of Mark Thompson from the Newsnight woman tonight - it must have felt a little strange for her to be asking the boss of her entire corporation if he "had considered his position".

There seems to be a growing tendency to want to take these things as high up the "chain of command" (urgh) as possible, but where do you stop?
I presume this is all pre-empting the OFCOM investigation which will report, when? And will probably lead to another load of anguished headlines and BBC self-flagellation.

How does the BBC justify the incredibly high salary that Ross recievies? I mean, isn't BBC funded by all the people who pay the mandatory tv license fee? Feels weird that the public thinks it's acceptable, or maybe they don't? Was there ever a debate about his salary?

Er yes, every day of every week. It is dull.

Maybe Gordon Brown should resign. It happened on his watch.

Ah, okay wasn't aware of that.

But I don't get all the fuss about this story. They made a tasteless joke, but why does that mean they have to get fired/suspended? Don't comedians say outrageous stuff ALL THE TIME? Is it cause the guy is old?

According to their latest Bulletin it's taken OFCOM 7 months to decide that...

The prolonged and close-up full-screen shots of the presenter stimulating and
massaging her bare breasts, pinching her nipples and shaking them to camera, were
in Ofcom’s opinion highly sexualised and not suitable for broadcast before 22:00. The
images of the presenter lying on her back with her legs open, briefly simulating
masturbation, and stroking her semi-naked body were also not acceptable before
22:00. (as shown on Bang Babes on Tease Me 2 apparently)

...which you would think was a pretty open and shut case.

No doubt they had to watch the footage several times before making a decision.

fucking self-perpetuating media wank fantasy clusterfuck stories such as this are a fucking joke and all 736 new answers should be almost as ashamed as the national news corporations for creating such a stinkingly enormous mound of prurient, utterly frivolous shite...BOTH main party leaders have commented for screaming out loud

i mean this is such bollocks

england should resign from the united kingdom

Alex Lester, Radio 2's weekday morning presenter, has will replace Brand as the station's new Saturday late night host, following his resignation on Wednesday.

So once Lester has resigned next Wednesday, he has will replace Brand?

BBC One's Friday Night with Jonathan Ross has been cancelled, and the 1994 film Speed will be shown in its place.

That'll get pretty tedious by the 11th week.

nah dude speed is a great movie

What is Jonathan Ross if he isn't presenting? A cheap. Gold. Watch.

bravo sic

And the new series - Ponderland?

Pretty good,I thought.

I was on the bus in LA and a story about this popped up on METRO TV

all 736 new answers should be almost as ashamed as the national news corporations for creating such a stinkingly enormous mound of prurient, utterly frivolous shite

I've found it quite entertaining. Prurient, frivolous, these are bad things are they?

they're good for a 30-second segment at the end of the bulletin

Isn't the 1994 film Speed being played on a semi-daily basis on ITV2 at the momenet, or, recently?

Stop being prurient or frivolous.

At the very start of this show Brand introduces Woss by saying something like 'here is the man who will destroy my career.' lols

Also I agree that complaining about The Incident is very Daily Mail but I can't imagine myself telling the grandfather of any ex of a friend of mine that my friend fucked his granddaughter. Not Ofcom-worthy but certainly o_O in the extreme.

Sorry about that sentence btw.

Richard Allinson to replace Ross and Alex Lester to replace Brand.

Suddenly Radio 2 has regressed back to 1973.

Dependable drones who'll do as they're told, won't rock the boat and will haemorrhage listeners to Absolute, xfm and Planet Rock.

Fuck this country of jealous, petty mediocrities and yellow-bellied "managers."

Ask yourself, Thompson; was the BBC being flushed down the toilet worth it just to appease the editor of the Daily Mail or Mrs Doreen Hitler of Childtoucher Avenue, Little Belsen, Dorset?

Another completely OTM Guardian piece.

no i agree, i think that's actually the crux of the matter for me - sure, the daily mail has gleefully whipped up hysteria over it, but it's picked this battle v cleverly cuz the 'prank' is kinda indefensible. it's a lot more jarring to me when i see people defend it as "just a bit of fun" or "just a bit of a laugh" than to see predictable huffy outrage. if this had happened in any other context whatsoever (imagine if a city boy wanker had done it!) it'd be seen as borderline sociopathic. someone upthread said they found it funny, but never explained what was actually funny about it - i can't comprehend that at all.

xps

i thought this column was good - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/31/bbc-jonathan-ross

although murray doesn't quite make the logical conclusion of her argument, which is that the blame should fall squarely and solely on brand and ross

And the producer(s) who should have seen all this coming well before air time. It's not exactly been a top year for the BBC.

I don't think that the views of envious failed ex-BBC penpushers are worth taking seriously.

I didn't find it especially funny but equally didn't find it anything more than a standard student jape such as can regularly be found in any hall of residence and certainly doesn't justify the destruction of the BBC.

What it does illustrate is how the recession is now subtly and unsubtly being used as a baton to bash the head of any member of an organisation who dares to express and exhibit the remotest sign of independence of thought. Keep your head down, play it safe, toe the line, it's a tough life on the dole.

I mean, is there a cogent argument why Jonathan Ross isn't worth a thousand journalists?

If we're just going to keep giving in to bullies then we might as well bring back the ducking stool, witch burning and smallpox because it will be straight back to the fucking Dark Ages.

1) It was a bit funny. Not a lot funny, a bit. But like every joke ever, it loses 70% on each time of telling, and now it's 0.000003% funny.

2) Just thinking of that George Lamb incident. For all the outrage of how GLa insulted RDav after the incident on-air, in fact the reson for sacking him, is that Zane, Grimmy, Chungy, hell even Cottony could actually have made a half-decent attempt to intervieew him on air, whereas GLam totally um what's the term? fucking shitted it. And that's why he should go: He's incompetent. Which is why it's different to RBrand/Ross as they are both not incomp.

3) My e button is still on random repeat but I'm not going through all that removing the spurious e's.

But since George Lamb is not A Celebrity, and no one listens to 6Music, nothing will be done.

xps
Marcello otm, the Daily Mail isn't going to stop now, there is literally no appeasing them.
As Littlejohn has itthis morning, We're mad as hell and we DON'T have to take it any more!

No one would be disadvantaged if Radios 1 and 2 were sold off. Radio 3 could seek corporate sponsorship or go to the wall.
Those who want to listen to classical music all day can tune in to Classic FM or buy a CD.

The idea of public broadcasting is complete anathema to these bastards.

Classic FM, part owned by GCap, in which Associated Newspapers owns a significant share.

He's really running with it...

For instance, if it can be proven that the BBC could be effectively privatised, why not refuse collection? It would be much cheaper and there'd be none of this 'alternative weekly collections' nonsense.

If all those people who have complained to the BBC this week did the same to their local MP, to their Town Hall, to Gordon Brown, we might just be in with a fighting chance of changing something.

Why - to take just one example from this week's news - should we pay taxes to fund the wages of 'experts' who visit schools trying to force children to stand on chairs and pledge not to be nasty to 'travellers'?

Why should we finance a vast elf 'n' safety industry dedicated to interfering in every nook and cranny of our lives, to finding out what we like to do and then devising ways to stop us?

Why should we pay six-figure salaries to po-faced puritans who spend their lives dreaming up new ways to fine and punish us for trivial and invented 'crimes'?

Why should we put up with being charged billions for a National Health Service run entirely for the benefit of the people who work in it, while the rest of us can wait weeks for a doctor's appointment and have to pay again, privately, to see a dentist?

Why should we pay for a police 'service' which spends most of its time playing politics and persecuting motorists, while failing to protect our property or patrol the streets?

Let this revulsion at the excesses of the BBC be the start of a popular revolution against an arrogant and largely unaccountable elite and their contempt for the paying public.

It's taken a seemingly minor incident to focus our attention on the way not just the BBC, but the whole of Britain is run.

At least he's not trying to hide his agenda, eh?

Or we could just all move to Florida and throw things at Littlejohn's house.

To paraphrase the late Brian Clough: he fucked off out of Britain and has thus forfeited the right to say anything about it. He should put up AND shut up.

I'd love to see Littlejohn's self assessment form.

Of course this is also the reason why this isn't just a frivolous and prurient story.