Britalian

I listened to the podcast of the Russell Brand radio programme last week and there was a thread running through the show that I really didn’t believe at the time.

Brand and his co-host, Jonathan Ross, phoned the voicemail of the actor Andrew Sachs. In a previous show, Brand had said that he had been in his hot tub with a girl who said she was Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter and asked him not to mention it.

So when Brand and Ross said they were speaking to Sachs later in the show, I thought it could not end well.

As it turned out, Sachs was unable to take the call (which was regarding a show Sachs appears in) so the pair left him a message saying hello. Brand mentioned that he had great respect for Sachs’ lineage, after which Ross shouted out “He f***ed your granddaughter!”

A little while later, they decided to call him back to try to defuse the situation. They did that a couple more time, including an apology sung by Brand. At the time, I thought they were simply playing a recording of Andrew Sachs’ voicemail message and then pretending to be leaving the messages, but it turns out they were actually leaving them on the voicemail of a 78 year-old man about his granddaughter.

In the last few days, this has exploded. Two people originally complained about Ross dropping the F-bomb. Since some news stations carried the story of Sachs’ displeasure, more and more people complained. Obviously, these people were complaining about something they did not listen to at the time it was broadcast.

I like Russell Brand. He is a genuine, funny guy. Ross, in my opinion, is a vastly overrated fool who swears regularly on his chat show purely to show some sort of edginess, something that Ross does not possess at all. He is also the highest paid person at the BBC.

Now, in the current financial environment, anyone who earns millions without deserving it is becoming fair game for the media to pile up on. Ross is the broadcasting equivalent of a City trader. Not only is he rude, arrogant and abusive, he is also incredibly well paid for it.

The whole incident was led by Jonathan Ross. Russell Brand was like a 14 year old boy being egged along by an older friend.

Both have now been suspended by the BBC. The whole thing is getting out of hand but there are people responsible not just for the incident, but also for the fact that it was allowed to be broadcast (the show was not aired live) who should be brought to account.