Bbc

‘Our’ by ‘our’, Boris’s resignation speech

There was a word I didn’t understand in Boris Johnson’s resignation speech (in which he did not resign). He spoke of ‘our fantastic prop force detectives’. Prop? Prop forwards, clothes props, proprietors, propositions, propellers? Perhaps they are personal protection officers, though I don’t think those are detectives. Or it might be family slang made up by Wilfred, two: ‘Ook, Papa, prop-props…’ More cunningly deployed in the 900 words of the speech was our. Not just our props but ‘our police, our emergency services, and of course our fantastic NHS… our armed services and our agencies… our indefatigable Conservative party members… our democracy’. First he had thanked ‘Carrie and our children’.

How the BBC was captured by trans ideology

During Pride month this year a banner has been emblazoned across the BBC’s internal staff website used by every single employee. It features the following text: ‘BBC Pride 2022: Bringing together LGBTQ+ people of all genders, sexualities and identities at the BBC.’ Most people who work at the BBC aren’t concerned about this. But the slogan really should ring alarm bells, because behind its seemingly benign message of inclusivity is a latent political message about trans rights that is undermining the corporation’s impartiality. As a BBC employee I am proud and delighted that the corporation is striving to be a welcoming employer for people from all walks of life, whatever

The cruelty of reality TV was part of the appeal

Jade Goody appeared on Big Brother in 2002. She was a short, loud, blonde-haired woman who broadcast her every thought and feeling, either in her thick Cockney accent or with her unforgettable face. She became a star. In 2007 she appeared on Celebrity Big Brother, where she made racist comments about her fellow contestant, the Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty. Effigies of Goody were burned in India; the Sun called her ‘the face of hate’. Hoping to redeem herself, she agreed to appear on Indian Big Brother, where she was told she had cervical cancer with the cameras still rolling. She died less than nine months later. It was a three-act

The best TV spy drama since Smiley’s People: Apple TV+’s Slow Horses reviewed

How thriller writers must miss the Cold War! Early John le Carré and Len Deighton had it easy when trying to create a convincingly menacing enemy: the Soviets, obviously. But their successors are forced to go through all manner of desperate contortions to generate their bad guy McGuffin. They can’t do Muslims because that’s Islamophobic; they can’t do the Chinese because the entertainment industry (like everywhere) is too in thrall to the CCP. So they end up promoting paper tigers like ‘right-wing extremism’, as Mick Herron does in the first of his Slow Horses series. Herron has been rightly hailed as the new Le Carré. His black-comedy novels about a

Rod Liddle

The BBC’s obsession with youth

At long last the state of Oregon has got around to installing tampon machines in the male lavatories of its many schools. I have campaigned long and hard on this issue. It has always seemed to me grossly unfair that girls should be provided with this facility but the poor boys utterly ignored. The sense of shame that these young men must have felt when their monthly cycles arrived unexpectedly – and remember that many of them will be victims of ‘period poverty’. Now, though, thanks to the state’s chirpily named Menstrual Dignity Act, equality has been achieved and I will therefore turn my attention to another consequence of social

Nadine Dorries: My vision for the BBC

When Nadine Dorries was named Culture Secretary last year, it proved to be the most controversial appointment of Boris Johnson’s reshuffle. Her critics weren’t afraid to point to what they saw as her flaws. She was a Scouser and former nurse put in charge of the cultural crown jewels. The only explanation they could come up with: she was intended to embody a two-finger flick, on behalf of the PM, to the BBC, Channel 4 and the arts world in general. The furore, she says, didn’t come as a surprise. ‘There are some men who do have a problem with a woman from my background achieving,’ she says. It also

The most disadvantaged group in Britain? White working-class men

I’m not sure what to think about the BBC’s announcement that it wants a quarter of its staff to be from working-class backgrounds by 2027. On the one hand, I’m against hiring quotas of any kind and think every position should be filled by the person best qualified for the job. But on the other, if the BBC is going to have diversity targets – and fighting against them seems futile at this point – then this one seems better than most. The rationale for this quota, according to the BBC, is it wants its staff to ‘better reflect UK society’, but I’m not sure it will achieve that. The

An impeccably rule-observing programme from the BBC: Art That Made Us reviewed

Art That Made Us is an ambitious new series, firmly in the ‘history of something in a load of different objects’ category. That the something in question is Britain duly means that we get the BBC’s usual, and perhaps even very British, mix of deep patriotism on the one hand and deep suspicion of patriotism on the other. The opening episode tackled the era formerly known as the Dark Ages, which the narrator felt duty-bound to remind us yet again was actually a period of great creativity and innovation. (Not that you could blame him. The darkness of the Dark Ages seems to be one of those myths that no

BBC political editor race descends into farce

It’s the best comedy the BBC has made in years. The twists and turns of the race to be the corporation’s next political editor have kept all of Westminster agog for months. Now, after a three month recruitment process whittled down the candidates to two outsiders, BBC bosses have decided that, er, that their preferred candidate may be in W1A after all. For Yorkshireman Chris Mason has re-emerged in recent days as the frontrunner to replace Laura Kuenssberg. The presenter of Radio 4’s Any Questions? ruled himself out of the running in January, but has been persuaded to put himself forward amid rumours that bosses do not wish to appoint either of the

Sunday shows round-up: Sunak says Ukraine and Brexit are not ‘analogous’

Rishi Sunak – Brexit vote and Ukraine resistance ‘are not analogous’ The Chancellor was in the TV studios this morning, ahead of the Spring Statement that he will deliver on Wednesday. Economic issues, like much else, have been cast into the shadows over recent weeks as the spotlight has inevitably focused on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Even today was no exception, as in his interview with the BBC’s Sophie Raworth, Rishi Sunak was first asked to address a stir caused by the Prime Minister’s remarks at the Conservative’s spring conference yesterday in Blackpool: Government’s energy support ‘will make a difference’ Turning to Sunak’s brief, Raworth asked about the rising cost of living

BBC redundancy costs triple

It’s been a difficult year for the BBC. Whether it’s Emily Maitlis or Peter Crouch, Andrew Marr or Simon McCoy, a whole host of stars have departed the Beeb as the corporation battles to remain relevant in the twentieth first-century. Budget cuts and increased competition mean that journalists with more than 1,000 years of experience have taken redundancy, retired or accepted big money deals from commercial rivals over the past two years. The mass exits have prompted fears of a ‘brain drain’ of talent with insiders expressing concerns about the difficulties of filling the smorgasbord of top posts which are currently vacant. Now a Freedom of Information request by Mr S has

New Marr is very much the same as the old Marr: LBC’s Tonight With Andrew Marr reviewed

Andrew Marr got his voice back this week. That may come as a bit of a surprise to everybody who’s been watching and listening to him on the BBC for the past 22 years but it’s the reason he gave when he announced last year that he was leaving. On Monday we heard the new voice. Marr made his debut on LBC. He’s presenting a 6 p.m. show four days a week in an hour nicked off Eddie Mair. Maybe ‘new’ voice is wrong. Not so much new, perhaps, as the old pre-BBC voice. The one he’d been forced to suppress. He called it ‘entirely my own voice’. After my

My escape from Kiev

I spent my last night in Kiev in the ‘Presidential Suite’ of a city hotel – what used to be known as the underground car park. The general manager, a man whose name I never knew but who I hugged tightly before leaving, had promised to make it a shelter for guests who hadn’t checked out by the time it was clear that war was looming. We stayed there with his staff, their young children and elderly parents, their dogs and cats too. It is still the home of the BBC staff who remain in Kiev: the reporters and presenters you know as well as those whose roles are just as

Why we shouldn’t ban Russia Today

Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary, has written to Ofcom urging it to keep the situation with Russia Today ‘very carefully under review’ given events in Ukraine. At PMQs, Keir Starmer called for the government to ask Ofcom to review RT’s license.  But if RT lost its broadcast license in the UK, then Putin would use this as an excuse to kick out the BBC and other British broadcasters. Just look at how Russia closed the Moscow office of Deutsche Welle, the German public service broadcaster, and ended the accreditation of its journalists after a German-language version of RT was taken off air in Germany. The least-worst option would be for

Storm Eunice has nothing to do with climate change

I sat tight and braced myself for the worst this morning — not high winds but for the Today programme to blame storm Eunice on climate change. Sure enough, at a quarter past eight, it didn’t disappoint. While a report acknowledged that it was not possible to blame specific weather events on climate change, Baroness Brown, who sits on the government’s climate change committee, was hauled on the show to explore the link between ‘extreme weather’ and climate change. She suggested that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would be producing a very frightening report on it soon. The use of the generalised term ‘extreme weather’ — i.e. without including

Where’s the ‘mystery’ in mystery plays?

In The Archers, Ambridge put on its own set of mystery plays dramatising the Nativity and Passion. BBC Radio 4 broadcast them separately from the soap opera, in which the village policeman has been driven to conversion by playing Jesus. My husband, commenting on all this, said that ‘of course’ the word mystery meant a trade or craft, as the medieval plays were performed by companies of trade guilds. He might have been reading the website of the Chester Mystery Plays, due for their five-yearly performance in 2023: ‘The word mystery comes from the French mystère meaning “craft”, and apprentices joined the guilds to learn their mystery or craft. When

The heroism of Novak Djokovic

Novak Djokovic’s readiness to walk away from tennis on a point of principle is an act of sporting heroism on a par with Muhammad Ali’s refusal to fight in the Vietnam war. Like Ali was when he said he had ‘no quarrel with them Viet Cong’, Djokovic is widely accepted to be the greatest master of his sport of all time. Ali, then at the height of his powers, was banned from boxing for three years for his stance. For refusing to take a Covid vaccination — a matter of conscience — we don’t yet know for how long Djokovic will be prevented from playing tennis at the highest level.

BBC political editor frontrunner’s thousand-dollar bash

Of all the jobs in Westminster journalism, BBC political editor is thought to be the hardest. Laura Kuenssberg will shortly be quitting the role after nearly seven years in post but it seems the corporation is having a hard time finding a successor. First, favourite Vicki Young, Kuenssberg’s deputy, ruled herself out of the running. And then, last week, Mr S revealed that the Beeb had had to extend the deadline by another fortnight to allow more applicants. The current frontrunner is Jon Sopel, who recently returned to Britain after almost eight years as the BBC’s main man in North America. Despite protestations that he is taking a ‘long break’ to write a book,

BBC advertise for new Laura K

Roll up, roll up: the biggest prize in political journalism is up for grabs. Laura Kuenssberg is stepping down as BBC political editor after more than six-and-a-half years, which means a bun fight over who gets to replace her. Highly-rated internal candidates include Jon Sopel and Alex Forsyth, after the favourite, Kuenssberg’s deputy Vicki Young, ruled herself out of the race. The job advert went live six hours ago so Mr S has been taking a dive into what the corporation wants from its political editor in 2022. Scoop-getting is clearly top of the bill, with the Beeb demanding ‘a strong track record of breaking stories first’ and ‘an extensive contacts book at

Letters: The BBC licence fee is a protection racket

Russia’s star Sir: Wolfgang Münchau is surely right to highlight the risk posed to European peace and stability by Germany’s strategic myopia (‘In the pipeline’, 22 January). But he may be in error to assert that ‘Russia is in the ascendant’ — at least in terms of the fundamentals. Russia no longer makes it into the top ten of the world’s economies and is about to be overtaken by South Korea. Its poorly developed economy is unduly reliant on energy exports — a sort of Saudi Arabia with snow instead of sand. A state whose star is rising has every incentive to sit tight and allow that to continue —