Russell Brand is a classic Marmite character – you love him or you can’t stand him. Jonathan Ross, meanwhile, is a little less offensive though gets a lot of people’s backs up with his sickening eight-figure salary and weekly chat-show ego trips.
However, both men are the current darlings of the BBC and up to now have got away with their controversial jokes and smutty humour.
But this week they are facing investigations by both Ofcom and the BBC after taking their ‘sense of humour’ one step too far and leaving obscene messages on the voicemail of veteran actor Andrew Sachs – which were then broadcast on Brand’s Radio 2 show.
Quite what they said has not been widely reported, other than lewd remarks claiming Brand had slept with Sach’s teenage granddaughter and suggesting the 78-year-old might kill himself as a result.
In the aftermath, there appear to be two schools of thought on the incident. One is that Sachs has overreacted and so is seen as a bad sport, while the other extreme sees a number of organisations, politicians and members of the public calling for the two men to be fired – or at least suspended – from the BBC.
I am not easily offended, I get Brand’s humour and have no particular feelings either way towards Ross, but it seems to me that even if you take a rational approach to the incident, there is still no way it was ok.
Without sounding like a Daily Mail reader, what they did was basically bullying. Phoning someone up and making rude jokes at their expense so you and other people can laugh at them is the sort of thing you hear about school children doing, and Sachs was well within his rights to react as he did.
To poke fun at the man himself is one thing – though arguably no better – but to pick on a man’s granddaughter in such a bawdy way is quite another. I doubt they would have done it to his face, and if they had I imagine he would have walked out of the interview.
Eyebrows have been raised that this was a pre-recorded show and given approval for broadcast by the show’s young producer. It has been reported a call was made to Sachs to ask if he minded the calls being aired, but that he did not respond in the time frame.
While any journalist who has had the most basic of training knows that without giving the right to reply you have no defence, that isn’t really the point.
The pathetic call should never have been made in the first place and it is almost irrelevant that it was broadcast.
Apologies have been made, though Brand still didn’t take it seriously and acted like a petulant child making it clear he was apologising because he had been told to.
Whether Brand and Ross should be fired is a difficult one. I would have thought the shame they are feeling at having their stupid behaviour reported on their own employer’s 10 O’Clock News, together with the public flogging and massive fall from grace they are now enjoying should probably be enough punishment.
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