Thursday 14 May 2015

Swearing on the fucking Beeb

Over on Biased BBC, DB has unearthed more incontinent Tweets from one of the BBC’s foulest.

A new member of the Radio 4 News Quiz team has been announced. Someone called Elis James. Elis wears his heart on his sleeve, but his views, like other adolescent BBC employees, are his own.

(Have you noticed that the BBC’s headlines always seem to be about sport? Look on the sidebar of this blog) We pay for this.

Elis James likes football, booze, and the Labour Party. 




I’m not prudish about swearing. I do it all the time. However, when Billy Connolly gave up trying to get a laugh by telling funny jokes and fell back on simply uttering ‘fuck’, it was the kiss of death for Connolly. 

Did anyone see Rory Bremner last night?   Did anyone find any of it funny? What about the bit at the very end, with ‘the Queen’ swearing? Embarrassingly and gratuitously  unfunny. 
Blimey. Poor Bremner.

10 comments:

  1. Swearing I find mostly serves the person who swears the poorest.

    Doesn't bother me much as one (in the right company, who can make a Glasgow ship welder blush - if not a growing cabal of BBC political commentators and interviewers... I think they have a bet going) who has erred to the potty-mouthed on occasion, and on broadcast that is what watersheds are for. All totally negated by the web, of course, so heigh-ho.

    However....

    Adding yet another one whose political views are clearly their own, but demand sharing to a wider audience (latest RT of Denis Skinner post suggests an certain skew) as soon as getting through the BBC door is, frankly, quite brave as various accusations of partiality rage and supposedly tough ministers assess their new brief.

    It's like the BBC reckon they are Teflon.

    Here's looking forward to Elis trying to make a name and saying something very, very, very stupid.

    Mind you, it's not like a predecessor didn't set a precedent for easily getting away with putting the 'n' in 'c' stuff, so maybe anything goes?

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  2. Yes, how poor Rory has fallen eh?
    It`s clear their hearts weren`t in it-all predicated on a Labour win, and it was car crash telly.
    Poor John Bird-bereft without the lamented Fortune, with no-one to tell him to stay away from such pointless cliched pish.
    As for the bloke who does a good Miliband impression-and must have thought he`d have 5 more years at the BBC-it was obvious that he knew that this was his death rattle on BBC "comedy"-and his impressions had that quiet desperation of Ed himself.
    And we paid for that baloney-hope Whittingdale will ensure that the BBC is sent to the land of wind and ghosts...Rory looked like he`d already packed up and gone...

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  3. Did you hear Norman Smith called Farage a c*nt (rather than a "cult") live on TV today.

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  4. I am very seriously thinking of starting a GoFundMe type campaign to pay for some time and research to collect all the Beeboid tweets and write up something with the context and background info on each Beeboid quoted. Surely there's an entire book of material there, and the time is ripe with all the freaking out about the nasty Tories punishing the BBC at last. Full credit and hopefully share of proceeds to DB for doing the lion's share of finding them, of course.

    Any thoughts?

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    Replies
    1. Sorry for the tardy reply, David. I've been out of action since Wednesday. That sounds like a very good idea. Some people's Twitter feeds could supply whole chapters to themselves. Obviously, you're free to use every example we've posted on 'Is' and can post (or cross-post) as much of your work here as you like.

      The BBC's own official (guidelines), semi-official (Mark Mardell's lecture) and unofficial (Hugh Sykes's tweets on the subject) need re-thinking about, as they seem to contradict each other somewhat.

      Delete
  5. PS: Having seen the Norman Smith video, it does look like an honest accidental twisting of the tongue. His demeanor is quite different from the giggling Today slime.

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  6. David Cameron " Psycho" ? Uh ? And Rory ceased to be funny years ago.

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  7. I submitted a few more FOIs yesterday.

    The confirmations just came in. Along with this about BBC sweariness, cute or accidental:

    https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/internal_emails_containing_swear?nocache=incoming-647151

    It was a safe bet that was not going to get far, but the excuses given for why not are worth more than any attempt to answer.

    On a related note I need to reply on this one (the others are rejected for 'purposes of', 'too much time' or 'playing dumb to understand', though I can appeal):

    https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/bbc_have_your_say_thread_opening?

    I am reluctant to waste more time on refining the request as:

    a) It is actually fine as the questions are related, and,

    b) They will simply find another excuse to reject it

    I can of course simply split it into chunks and resubmit until their 'we don't have to reply as we've made ourselves too inefficient to do so' counter is not triggered.

    Any suggestions before I say and do just that welcomed.

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    Replies
    1. Sorry, Peter, as I said to David above, I've been out of action for a couple of days so sorry for the late reply.

      The one asking about the BBC's use of swear words and the BBC's reply saying her FoI request risks "potentially causing distress" shows Auntie going uncharacteristically Mary Whitehouse-like - in their own interests, of course.

      Ah, they've gone for the 'two and a half' days option on your request. You could split it into chunks, but you could ask them to split it down over a month (say April, during the election). That should surely take them less than two and a half days.

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    2. Oh, no worries!

      As it happens, the period pre-election was exactly the one I am planning to focus on. It could still be interesting, unless another excuse emerges from the woodwork.

      Delete

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