BBC Suspends Top Late Night Host over “Fawlty Towers’ Comedy Bit
National scandal in Britain as Prime Minister joins calls for government censorship
By David Blake
Fawlty Towers a classic off limits for comedy
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 10/31/08 - In a year when BBC has been riddled with scandals, this may be the most alarming yet as British government-run BBC is being accused of censure of comedy skits. In America, President Bush is not allowed to fire Jay Leno for making fun of him. Not necessarily so in the UK, where Leno/Howard Stern-type counterpart Jonathan Ross has been censured and suspended for a stunt involving multi-continent BBC hit John Cleese show “Fawlty Towers.”
“Fawlty Towers” Spanish waiter Manuel, actor Andrew Sachs 78, had rejected any need for censure after ‘Britain’s Leno’ Johnathan Ross and fellow ‘shock jock’ Russell Brand, left messages bragging about sex with Sachs’ grand-daughter, Georgina, 23.
Although only two people complained when the taped radio show was originally broadcast, after four days of media pressure and millions of hits on Youtube, 35,000 complaints were whipped up by London’s right wing Puritan press.
Cue Big Brother. The farce was only missing John Cleese or it would have made a longed for new episode. It’s not like the original show didn’t make fun of the character in the first place — he was a bumbling waiter who didn’t fit in to a British society.
Ross was suspended without pay for three months and Brand resigned from the BBC permanently.
The widely respected head of Britain’s most popular station Radio 2, Ms. Lesley Douglas 45, also resigned after 23 years with the BBC, despite not having heard the tape prior to broadcast. She was accused of a “lax regime of control over presenters.”
One of her more conservative presenters claimed that he had written to her warning that Russell Brand was a “time bomb that would go off eventually”.
Ross “and others” were told by the self governing BBC Trust, that this was a “final warning” and that the BBC must “demonstrate the highest level of editorial standards at all times.”
The BBC Governor had spent seven hours at Westminster apparently explaining how the “Editorial Standards Committee” failed to stop the offending material from being broadcast and deciding what to do.
The BBC was ordered to “tighten control over content immediately” and to subject “edgy” presenters to “greater scrutiny.”
How British comics will perform while wondering if they are becoming “inappropriate” has not yet been fully addressed.
Most agree that the material was an intrusion of the actor’s privacy but those who actually bothered to view it had mixed views as to how obscene it was. Some found it “funny as hell” and wondered what the BBC had expected would happen if the two self described “bad boys” were not adequately supervised.
Who exactly gave the green light for the pre-recorded program to make it on air was still being deliberately obscured but a 25 year old producer, in the employ of Russell Brand’s company, admitted playing it for Sachs over his mobile phone. Sachs was left with the impression that a new attempt to arrange a new interview would possibly take place “sometime next week.”
The next thing Sachs knew was when the three uncensored calls to his answer phone were broadcast containing the “obscene” material about his granddaughter being “bent over the couch”.
Ross scandal now BBC's censorship shame
Ross is Britain’s Jay Leno - the ‘highest ever’ paid performer on British TV, at $12 million a year.
Most ‘A list’ American actors promoting their latest movies in London know how helpful a short appearance on Ross’ top rated chat show can be, reaching 4 million every Friday night. Not for the next twelve weeks though.
Following calls from Politicians for him to be “sacked”, he has been “suspended” although given “a last chance to prove that he can behave appropriately.”
A million pound slap on the wrist then?
With the BBC’s many enemies calling for heads to roll, it could still be investigated by broadcast watchdogs, Ofcom (the UK’s FCC) for breaching the ‘code of conduct’.
Russell Brand’s message bragged about having slept with Miss Georgina Baille, 23, the national treasure’s granddaughter, who dances under the stage name Volupta in a burlesque troupe The Satanic Sluts. Stories are surfacing that she provides dominatrix services for $200 per hour. She admits they slept together and her website listed Brand as one of her friends.
Front page headlines have dwarfed coverage of the US election and the credit crunch.
Brand fell on his sword and resigned from his BBC radio show saying “we made a mistake - we crossed a line” although cynics point out that his “street cred” is now greater than ever and today he flew off to Los Angeles to work on “making films”.
Americans may remember his antics on the September VMA awards. He caused offence to the “Purity Ring” Jonas Bros brigade but it nevertheless increased his US profile. The New York Times were appreciative of Brand’s VMA turn, saying the “manic, intelligent English comedian, injected the show with politics (pro-Barack Obama), raunch and philosophical musings.” He had also called George Bush a “retarded cowboy”.
The BBC’s annual budget of $6 billion is funded by the British public via a compulsory, per household, annual $200 licence fee. Little wonder then that opportunist politicians, including the newly confident Prime Minister, jumped on the bandwagon.
Director General Mark Thompson had returned from holiday, stepped in and suspended the highly successful duo ‘until I have seen a full report’.
Meaning presumably that he had been hoping it would blow over a bit while perhaps a month long investigation could blame the 25 year old producer Nick Phelps who was one of those that authorised that the content be broadcast.
Not in today’s 24 hour speeded up news environment. News is reported on the Internet and not in newspapers and there was no time for a month of analysis. The media is obsessed with media so the scandal still runs.
The BBC might also investigate why it failed to protect Ross from himself. As one of their main program rating assets, providing him with a “minder” to make sure he avoided train wrecks might have been sensible.
Russell Brand, the main culprit, initially issued half-hearted, shallow, apologies, ‘it was funny though’, to Ms. Baille and her grandfather. He didn’t realise how such a trivial issue could be overblown.
Talk of prosecution by the police, based on the fact that it happens to be a criminal offence, i.e. against the law to make abusive phone calls, was dismissed by Mr. Wachs in a dignified doorstep interview.
He said ‘I’m not out for revenge, I am a performer, they are two performers and sometimes things go wrong’. Confirming that he had not authorised the content to be aired after the producer had played it to him on a mobile phone, he insisted that he was nonetheless ‘not collecting apologies’ although he was pleased to have received them. One wonders if the 25 year old producer had brains to record that conversation. Could the fact that he has not been fired mean that Sachs implied his approval? And even if he did?
As the BBC optimistically congratulates itself on having “drawn a line” under the affair, others wonder whether Ofcom, the equivalent of the US’s FCC will step in and impose heavy fines and $500,000 has been mentioned. Sadly, this would indirectly be paid by the tax payer unless Ross or Brand can be proven liable. The fact that they both may reasonably have expected their 25 year old producer to edit out anything deemed too offensive might be a good defence.
Both could easily afford relatively minimal British fines and both have long known that ‘any publicity is good publicity’.
In today’s celebrity culture, Brand may even have believed that his usual ‘over the top’ behavior would enhance substantially the ‘so far limited’ career of his friend Ms. Georgina. She is already an overnight star.
She appeared yesterday from the offices of Rupert Murdoch’s Sun Newspaper indignantly calling for the pair to be sacked - despite the Sun having helpfully dug in their archives, publishing her 2005 topless pictures taken when she aspired to become ‘a Page 3 Girl’.
She is definitely talking about the possibility of pressing charges. One wonders what the Sun will pay her for her exclusive further insight. (Dominatrix stories sell papers in the UK, ask anyone in Formula One).
Tory MP John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons Media Select Committee, said: ‘This is a serious breach compounded by a failure to issue a proper apology. ‘What is more troubling is that this part of the radio programme went through editorial checks and balances that are meant to stop this from happening.’
Sachs’s had been left ‘deeply upset’ and ‘terribly hurt’ by the jokes, which went out during Brand’s show on October 18.
Before the pre-arranged phone interview, Brand said: ‘In a minute we’re going to be talking to Andrew Sachs, Manuel actor. The elephant in the room is, what Andrew doesn’t know is, I’ve slept with his granddaughter.’
The comedian then rang Sachs. When the veteran actor didn’t answer, Brand left a message during which Ross shouted ‘He f***ed your granddaughter!’
The pair left a number of subsequent messages, with Brand ‘reassuring’ Sachs that he had worn a condom and in an improvised song, that the sex was ‘consentual’ and ‘full of respect’.
Ross could be heard singing in the background: ‘Your granddaughter … she was bent over the couch…’
Sachs said today: ‘I had a very contrite letter from Jonathan Ross making no excuses for his behavior.’
‘They apologise to me and they say how awful for Mr Sachs, but nobody has offered any apology to my grand-daughter. I replied to Jonathan Ross and suggested that is where he should direct his attentions.
‘The real focus should be on the harm they have done to her.’
No surprise that commentators on Murdoch’s SKY News pointed out that any commercial broadcaster ‘would have fired the pair within 30 minutes’. The BBC is one of SKY’s main competitors in the UK.
But even the BBC’s own News department was equally hostile about Ross. Possibly thanks to the widely reported “I’m more important than 1,000 journalists” statement made when his new contract was announced just as the news staff faced cut backs.
“Wossy” (he has a speech impediment) does have many detractors. He is famous for being for vile to Top Tory politician David Cameron (had he “had a w**k thinking about Margaret Thatcher?”), Gwyneth Paltrow (”if I call my wife and she says it’s OK, can I f**k you? - She’s gagging for it.”) so he knows that pushing boundaries gets the ratings the same bureaucrats want. Unless people are watching, they fear that their budget will be cut, just like it is at the US networks.
But he is also widely respected for his knowledgeable, well-researched insightful interviews with major movie stars, most of whom appreciate his scathing wit, not to mention the enormous value of his erudite and usually generous movie reviews. He will be sorely missed by his many fans who will wonder loudly what the fuss is all about.
Pretty much everyone will win in the end - look out for Ms. Georgina on reality television with a perfume line. Full sordid details of the three times she admits sleeping with Brand will probably be serialised in The Sun.
Russell Brand has extended his demographics massively. Ross will probably donate a few weeks salary to Mr. Wachs’ favorite charity and “Manuel” will be Ross’s first guest when his show returns to Friday nights. His grand daughter might show up in her fishnets.
Britain was getting bored with the credit crunch and the US election. This story is just what was needed. Many are asking what the Government is doing in the entertainment business anyway.
Hopefully the traditionally liberal standards of British comedy TV will not be affected by this ‘boys being boys’ farce. Even if all the usual Politically Correct ‘former editors’ shout about vulgarity and declining standards for a few more days. We are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
