Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand have been suspended from the BBC, after they made lewd comments on actor Andrew Sachs' voicemail during a radio show broadcast on 18 October. Oddly, there was only 2 complaints from Radio 2 listeners at the time, but after the story broke in the newspapers a few days ago, the complaints have rocketed to over 18,000. Funny that.I hope the complainers bothered to listen to the incident themselves, instead of registering a knee-jerk complaint based on the second-hand assessments of tabloids. But is it a lot of fuss over nothing? Well, no. I heard the podcast before the story broke, and it was certainly in bad taste for Ross to blurt out "he's fucked your granddaughter!" when Brand got through to Sachs' voicemail. It had been a running joke for awhile that Sachs' granddaughter Georgina Baillie had slept with Brand, but had asked the comedian not to tell her famous relative.
To book Sachs as a guest was clearly intended to mine comedy from "the elephant in the room" of Brand's antics with Sachs' granddaughter -- which is a bit distasteful alreay. I'm sure the interview would have taken a different path had Sachs answered his phone, but the naughty schoolboy temperaments of Brand and Ross (who are both immature in their own different ways) proved too much to resist when they clicked through to his voicemail.
What nobody's remarked on is how the situation would probably have been avoided if Brand's co-host Matt Morgan were present. He's the sensible one, who often reigns in Brand if he goes too far. But he's been on holiday for the past few weeks, necessitating the need for guest co-hosts like Ross. Sadly, Brand is very much a loose canon and easily led by someone like Ross.
But why was the show even broadcast by the BBC? It was pre-recorded, so major damage could easily have been avoided. But the producer decided to let it air (slightly edited) without even asking for Andrew Sachs permission. Which would obviously not have been granted.
No, there's no excuse for what Brand and Ross did, even though this was a style of edgy, dangerous, controversial humour most people will have heard or even participated in. Let's get real: I've heard worse things down the pub in my time, quite regularly. You just don't broadcast that thing to the nation, on the BBC. And, while both have apologized to Sachs, they only did so when it all kicked-off in the papers.
I guess this means there'll be no Friday Night with Jonathan Ross for awhile?
