Or should it be Brand and Ross? It was Brand’s BBC Radio 2 programme. Anyway, after the dust has settled will the lawyers now want their say? I read a report in the business section of The Times yesterday titled, “The Ross-Brand affair stripped bare” with the subheading, “What puzzles some employment lawyers is how the BBC was able to suspend Jonathan Ross without pay.” The report was by Edward Fennell.
We would have been walking around both blind and deaf if we were not aware of the furore surrounding the Radio 2 show back Saturday 18 October concerning Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand. They used the BBC 2 radio to air a series of obscene phone calls they had made to the 78-year-old Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs. Following the furore Brand decided to do the right thing and resign. As a radio presenter he is on just £200,000 a year! - small fry compared to Jonathon Ross who is the BBC’s highest paid TV presenter and entertainer on £6m a year and claims to be worth more than a 1000 journalists - so a story newspapers were not going to miss out on. What was the BBC going to do? With over 27,000 complaints to the BBC, the slumbering and faltering management eventually decided to take action. Brand resigned and Ross was suspended for three months with no pay, really a fine of £1.5m. It also cost the BBC 2 Radio Controller of the show her job. After all, it was pre-recorded! If you saw or read of what was broadcast you must just wonder how these two could have flipped their lids. It seems they had wound themselves up into such a silly five minutes that they lost control of their faculties. All sense of respect and decency disappeared completely.
The only Sunday newspaper article on it I read was by Melanie Phillips in the Mail on Sunday. I used to read her writings when she journaled for The Times. If you read her Internet link for this particular article you will note words like, Gloating, cruelty, foul, vulgarity and shameful. (http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1080823/MELANIE-PHILLIPS-Gloating-cruelty-foul-vulgarity-shameful-BBC.html ). And there is no doubt that it was all of that and anyone reading this should be WARNED that Melanie Phillips reports the offensive material used on air by Ross and Brand. How could two top adult entertainers on air, paid by the public, have indulged in what was nothing less than gross misconduct?
It reminded me of a few incidents in my life - one of which I had good reason to remember. It goes back to when I was a junior school kid. It involved me directly. I was just on my way out of the house going to school when I ran into other kids on their way to school. There was nothing unusual about that - we all ran or walked to school in those days - in all weathers! No mothers with 4 X 4s to take us - but then things were more secure in those days and the school was local. What was different that day was that these kids had crowded around an elderly gent calling him names. They were just baying in an intimidating manner, repeating the phrase, “Old Mr John, Old Mr John.” Mr John used to wheel an old Pedigree perambulator - one with high wheels and springs with the hood removed in which he used to fetch logs for his fire. He never bothered anyone - he just went about his business going down our street, on his way to fetch some logs.
I don’t know how it began; it was already under way when I bumped into them not far from my house. I don’t know either how I got involved, but I did. Mine was a strict upbringing when it came to respect for God, people and property. But I got caught up in the moment and joined in, shouting with the others “Old Mr John, Old Mr John.” I can’t imagine how intimidating that must have been for that elderly gentleman - who didn’t do any harm to anyone in his travels up and down the village.
When the crowd dispersed and we hurried off to school, I knew I had done wrong. But the day’s activities began to replace the guilt feelings and by the time it was home time I had forgotten all about it, until I rounded the side of the house with no care in the world, - then I stopped! There on the back doorstep was my dad - talking with Mr John! It was a sober and serious conversation that was taking place. I could see by the expression on my dad’s face that I was in for trouble. I walked slowly the rest of the way to the back door and sidled past my dad on into the kitchen - and waited, nervously. I had reason to be nervous. They eventually finished talking and Mr John went his way, which began the expected confrontation with my dad and me. No good protesting, I had known better. I knew I had done wrong and should not have done it, but I got caught up with that pack mentality when sanity disappears and wanting to be part of the crowd took over. But those silly moments also caught up with me at the end of that school day. With a bunch of other kids I had subjected a decent elderly gentleman to a very ugly and intimidating ordeal.
Like Ross and Brand we had flipped our lids! I, with my strong Protestant upbringing, had gone against my conscience and in a silly five minutes lost control of my faculties. All sense of respect with which I was raised disappeared.
From that day, I had reason to remember that being a cheeky brat of a kid to my elders - or to my peers, was not a civilised way to behave. My dad had good reason to be disgusted at my behaviour, and I had good reason to reflect on my stupidity. That was the first thing that came to mind when I read of the report in the Mail on Sunday on the Ross and Brand affair by the journalist, Melanie Phillips
