'Soft power' and Fat Boy Kim

Kim Jong-un

The Sunday Times had a bit of a scoop this morning, reporting that William Hague and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are "helping" BBC Worldwide to negotiate with the sick, mass-murderous regime in North Korea to encourage them to allow various BBC programmes to be broadcast on the totalitarian dictatorship's airwaves - an exercise in 'soft power' by the British government.

[This is probably the sort of thing that gets our friend Tom wound up about the BBC. Has he given up already?]. 

The Sunday Times's headline went for one BBC programme in particular - Teletubbies on stand-by to soften up hardline North Korea - as, when it copied The Sunday Times - did the Daily Mail a couple of hours ago. 

The Daily Mail is where David Vance at Biased BBC spotted it - using the title TELETUBBIES FOR NORTH KOREA - and I'm doing to DV what the Daily Mail did to the Daily Telegraph. 

We bloggers call it 'borrowing'.

The Baby Sun from 'Teletubbies'

David missed an open goal that I'm not going to miss for all the tea in Pyongyang. 

Billy and the Beeb are clearly pushing Teletubbies in the hope of appealing to North Korea's Teletubby lookalike, Kim Jong-un. 

As we know from Gilbert O' and Sullivan, oriental types have funny names like Tinky Winky, Dipsy and Po, so that might well help.

Plus Kim Jong-un is bound to empathise with a character called Laa-Laa, as he and his regime are as la-la as a psychotic hatter.

Teletubbies say, Long Live General Kim Jong-un, the Shining Sun!