Sir Trevor McDonald: Not A Racist

Sir Trevor McDonald is one of Britain's most-trusted individuals. Whether it's natural disasters, war or terrible crime, Sir Trevor has always been there with a strong heart and a steady hand to calmly inform the public of the news.

So when Trevor McDonald decided to call Bernard Manning "a fat white bastard" just after he died on his News Knight TV show, the public listened, accepted it as truth and moved on. Except for the 112 viewers who complained to Ofcom about Sir Trevor McDonald being a dirty great racist, that is. But don't worry - Ofcom has cleared Sir Trevor McDonald of any racism which means, we think, Sir Trevor McDonald can now invoke the Double Jeopardy rule and never get investigated for racism again no matter what he does. That's great news for anyone hoping to go to the annual Sir Trevor McDonald White Power tea party and dance this weekend.

Probably one of the strangest TV shows we've seen this year is Sir Trevor McDonald's News Knight, where Sir Trevor McDonald - a dryly reassuring newsreader for three decades - told topical jokes, showed a bunch of YouTube videos and made a series of bewildering cracks about dockside prostitutes. Much of the humour on News Knight came from seeing Sir Trevor McDonald saying things he'd never say on the news, which is good because none of the humour came from regular News Knight guest Clive Anderson.

Anyway, on the episode of News Knight directly following the death of Bernard Manning, Sir Trevor McDonald took the time to call Manning a "fat white bastard," skewing Bernard Manning's only joke in his favour. And viewers were outraged. Well, 112 viewers were outraged, which probably accounted for about 85% of News Knight's viewers. These 112 individuals all complained to television watchdog Ofcom over the crack, not because of the joke's disgusting inaccuracy - Bernard Manning hadn't been white for years, he was more of an ill-looking off-grey colour - but because they thought Sir Trevor McDonald was being racist. However, Ofcom has now told those viewers to shut up, as BBC News reports:

Broadcaster Sir Trevor McDonald has been cleared of making a racist remark about comedian Bernard Manning, despite more than 100 complaints to Ofcom. The watchdog said the ex-newsreader had used strong language which was "clearly intended to parody Manning's own comedy" on his ITV1 series News Knight. Any offence caused "was justified in the context", Ofcom ruled. Sir Trevor referred to the late star as "a fat white bastard", but this was not judged to have breached Ofcom's code.

So thank God for that - an ironic line on a satirical TV show wasn't found to be racist. However, these complaints have shown that the public can have trouble accepting when a trusted news broadcaster tries to do something other than hard-hitting current affairs. This difficulty - and the subsequent loss of credibility - means that a second series of Sir Trevor McDonald's News Knight is now in jeopardy, as well as putting the skids on the new TV show about Natasha Kaplinsky pushing different vegetables up her bottom while dressed as one of Run D.M.C.

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TV's Sir Trevor Cleared Of Racism - BBC