First it was the legions of the Christian Right claiming that the television broadcast of 
Now the Daily Mail-reading heartland of this pit we call the UK have found something else to raise their heckles. They’ve put aside their copies of The Da Vinci Code and turned down their Norah Jones CDs long enough to dial in their indignation. The target? Last week’s episode of Friday Night With Jonathan Ross.
Anyone who caught the show will have probably already guessed what all the fuss is about: comedian Marc Wootton’s spoof interview under the guise of hapless ‘TV Psychic’ Shirley Ghostman.
Ghostman made a couple of jokes about Judaism and cancer which 350 certain viewers – i.e. self-righteous Landrover-drivers – considered to be utterly ‘unacceptable.’
And the Beeb’s reaction? Did it staunchly stand by the broadcast, reeling off a stirring recital of how the corporation is dedicated to free speech and the practice thereof? No. Of course it didn’t.
It apologised. It put it’s license-funded tail between its legs and mumbled the words ‘sorry’ like some reprimanded six-year-old. "It was certainly not our intention to cause such offence", a spokesman sniffled.
"We realise the comments were clearly more extreme to some viewers for whom the spoof nature of this character was perhaps unclear," he went on. Well … you want to know something, Mr. BBC? There’s a name for viewers like that; a word that describes them perfectly.
That word is stupid. You shouldn’t be apologising to people like that; you should be banning them from access to the gogglebox whatsoever. Or newspapers. Or the outside world in general.
An earlier segment of the show – in which host Jonathan Ross referred to guest Nicole Kidman’s mother as a ‘bitch‘ – also attracted a slew of complaints, as did that evening’s broadcast of ‘Have I Got News For You‘ and it’s ‘offensive‘ jibes about some silly dead rich man (the Pope, we think his name was).
Guess what the BBC did. Go on.
"We recognise that some in our audience may not share this view," it coughed nervously. "We certainly don’t set out to offend."
Jesus. Grow some balls, guys. Stick two fingers up to these morons and send them the simple, well-trodden message: if you don’t like something, you don’t have to watch it.
Or they could follow in the footsteps of uber-satirist Chris Morris – he of the Brass Eye paedophile special – and respond to complaints with a letter of reply that begins "Dear Sir. A raving idiot has written to me using your name …"
You never know. It might just work.
The BBC Has More News About Itself
[story by C J Davies]
