russell brand - C or D?

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.

I mean I know he's got 20 assistants who just run these things off cut-and-paste style and all that but even so.

Incidentally, I watched Ponderland and didn't think much of it. Essentially Tarrant On TV plus penis.

Why not "Why should we buy newspapers allowing hateful fuckers to peddle ill-informed scaremongering about how this country is going to hell in a handcart all because we have public funded bodies operating on public funding?"? Oh the humanity, etc.

(also massive lols at a grumpy old man describing public service employees as arrogant and contemptuous of the British public)

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.

can you explain what was "a bit" funny about it then? b/c i can't comprehend why anyone would do this at all in the first place, and still less why anyone would be amused by it.

(a) because that's what they were hired and paid to do.
(b) most people who listened to it were amused by it except the two who complained.

(a) because that's what they were hired and paid to do.

This is the most u+k point of the entire affair. It's being said a lot, but it needs to be.

have they left disgusting messages on peoples phones before, then ?

I think you're mixing up Brand and Ross with debt collectors there.

it was a serious question, have they done anything as retarded as this before on the show?

A large part of Russell Brand's stand-up routine consists of him prank-calling people, so probably, yes.

Depends what you mean by "retarded."

For instance, Radcliffe and Maconie's disgraceful and racist extended campaign against Jay-X headlining at Glastonbury apparently warranted no censure at all.

But then that wouldn't have made A Good Story.

Put it this way: Brand and Ross were not hired to discourse on sixteenth century Silesian choral music.

xxp Based on their reactions as they were doing it, I'm guessing not on Radio 2, at least. Brand seemed pretty surprised at what was happening. Ross was so busy basking in his self-worth that he didn't seem to notice.

correction "Jay-Z" sigh...

See, there you go again! "busy basking in his self-worth." As though you wouldn't!

so this is all Ross's fault, Brand had a different agenda for the radio show?

figures.

See, there you go again! "busy basking in his self-worth." As though you wouldn't!

― Do they mean us? They surely do! It's Ray Conniff! (Marcello Carlin), Friday, 31 October 2008 20:27 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I wouldn't, but I wouldn't be on Radio 2 either, so moot point.

I mean, was Richard "Autopilot" Allinson really the best R2 could do?

Oh yes, I forgot - cheap reliables who won't rock the boat, even if no one listens to them.

I speak as someone who's seen Russell Brand's stand-up show but hasn't listened to his radio show, btw. He's no stranger to controversy, let's be honest - presume part of the strategy of hiring him was to bring some of this "oh wow, whatever will he do next, that "edgy" and "controversial" comedian that we have employed?". But, as has been pointed out ad nauseam, it was Ross that ended up being the idiotic ringmaster of the piece.

this prank wasn't "edgy" and i am going to scream if i see it referred to as such again

Lex, I think it's a bit pointless trying to explain to you why some people found it funny. Sometimes explaining a joke destroys it, and when it was as flimsy and personality driven as the one Ross and Brand did then it's even more so. As you said elsewhere all comedians are scum.

(x-post)

Don't you even have a shred of empathy for the improvised song?

Just because it shouldn't have been broadcast, doesn't mean it wasn't funny.

i put edgy in scare quotes for a reason. but whatever.