Nudge, nudge

Gillian Reynolds, the doyenne of radio critics (as I seem to always call her), reviewing a Radio 4 programme called The Disrupters, which "tells stories of business success and failure", also in today's Sunday Times, said something in passing that struck me as being quite interesting. She was saying that Editorial Director of BBC News Kamal Ahmed's reorganisation of BBC radio news showed that he was no good at either teamwork or admitting mistakes (well, he is BBC after all) but at least he has nerve: "I will admit it certainly required nerve to nudge quite so many outstanding reporters, Mark Mardell for one, into early retirement." I wasn't aware that we have Kamal to thank, though I don't think Gillian herself approves of Kamal's "nudging".

From today's papers...

Though regarding BBC Radio 4's afternoon plays as "vital" for our national culture, especially in a time of lockdown, that doyenne of radio critics Gillian Reynolds, writing in The Sunday Times today, admits that "plays that don't preach, accuse or induce guilt" are "hard to find" some days. 

"Radio 4's afternoon drama often sounds as if it's coming from a pulpit", she writes. "Race, class, gender: You will find lectures on them all here."

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The Mail on Sunday reports that Jeremy Clarkson has turned down new DG's Tim Davie appeal for him to return to the BBC, accusing the BBC of no longer being interested in broadcasting a variety of views, and freezing out presenters who failed to be politically correct:

Jeremy Clarkson: He [Tim Davie] was saying the other day, 'Oh, come home'. But the truth is, you'd struggle on the BBC now. It's so unbelievably right on. You just couldn't say anything which I make my living from saying.

How intriguing that Tim Davie tried to bring Jeremy Clarkson back to the BBC though! At least someone at the BBC doesn't want to freeze him out.

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The Martin Bashir affair is getting a lot of coverage in the papers this weekend. Accusations of a cover-up by the BBC over how Mr Bashir obtained his interview with Princess Diana are deepening. Lords Hall and Birt have been now dragged into it. It's still a remarkable thing that Martin Bashir was brought back in from the cold again by the BBC in 2016 and made, of all things, the corporation's Religion editor. 

Two anecdotes

A letter to The Observer:

I was the “woman at the back” on last Thursday’s Question Time from Winchester. On a previous occasion, I was the “woman in pink”. How Question Time has changed. These days you are obliged to supply your personal details and political affiliation in order to get a ticket. This is presumably to get audience balance, but who decides what the balance should be is not clear. 

The choice of panellists also raises more questions than it answers. Apart from politicians, the BBC calls on a limited list of journalists and so-called independent thinktank representatives (lobbyists). The usual suspects, who somebody in the organisation has defined as right or left, crop up with monotonous regularity along with random celebrities who rarely make a relevant contribution. 

The format has changed considerably over the years, with the chair chipping in, interrupting the panellists and too often appearing to reveal their own prejudices. Many friends and colleagues refuse to watch the programme now but those who have stuck with it won’t have been reassured by Fiona Bruce’s brief and grudging non-apology for her embarrassing demonstration of ignorance. 

Karen Barratt

Winchester

Gillian Reynolds in The Sunday Times: 

Meanwhile, BBC News, it is whispered, wants to shift Sarah Sands away from Today. Since she became its editor in 2017, Today has lost political clout and listeners. Sands has wit, spirit and powerful contacts. At Today, she has discovered she can’t change the presenters; that power belongs to the head of news, Fran Unsworth. You have to be BBC born and bred to dodge such quagmires.

Sunday morning

T'was the Sunday before Christmas when all through the blog not a creature was stirring, not even a frog. But I'm up and about nonetheless and reading the Sunday papers online, primed to pull out all the best BBC-related bits and stuff them into your Christmas stocking, ready for when you wake up...

First, Julie Birchill, writing in The Sunday Telegraph, isn't full of Christmas cheer about the BBC, writing "This was the year that the right-on echo-chamber completed its grisly castration of Radio 4 comedy – now all virtue-signalling mutual gratification with fewer laughs than the Christmas Day episode of EastEnders". She adds:

The standard of Radio 4 drama is positively subterranean, more often than not tracing the journey of an autistic asylum seeker contemplating a mastectomy while coping with being a single parent to a dyslexic non-binary child in danger of being taken into care and being bullied online. A recent Archers storyline had resident Lovely Gay Couple hiring a Bulgarian fruit-picker to incubate a baby for them only to have Brexit (hiss, boo, behind you!) wreck their rainbow-hued happiness. There is a strong feminist case against surrogacy and an equally rigorous socialist argument against keeping down working-class wages by hiring cheap foreign labour – but Auntie knows best, and debate is hate speech, and he is she, and self-defence is aggression. Oh, to have Orwell alive and back working at a BBC that appears to have taken 1984 as a How to Doublespeak manual!

Meanwhile, Decca Aitkenhead's interview with Dominic West in The Sunday Times finds the actor casting doubt on the BBC's claims about the "unconventionally diverse" casting for its flagship BBC adaptation of Les Misérables: 

The good news is that the BBC has dispensed with the songs and opted for a straightforward drama, written by the wonderful Andrew Davies. The dialogue sounds contemporary, and the casting is unconventionally diverse, with Valjean’s nemesis played by David Oyelowo. “In Paris in those days there was a large number of people from foreign climes, so the BBC is claiming the casting is historically accurate,” West says. “To be honest, I’m not sure. My guess is it’s not strictly historically accurate, but it gives a flavour of what we understand now, in that everyone talks in a modern British way and it resonates with what an immigrant class looks like.”

Incidentally, the "wonderful Andrew Davies", as per The Mail on Sunday, talks of another aspect of BBC social engineering, saying that BBC bosses veto any "droopy, soppy" girls he wants to pen, and that he's not allowed to make his women anything but feisty: 

I started writing lead characters for women who disconcerted men quite early on in my career. Now it's compulsory because drama networks are run by strong women who like to see themselves reflected. I often find myself pleading, 'Can't I write a really droopy, soppy girl?' And they say, 'No, she's got to be strong and independent.' 

And the same paper features further criticism of the BBC's new Poirot adaptation under the headline 'BBC’s new Poirot story ‘is turned into anti-Brexit propaganda’ by writers who have built on racial tensions that ‘barely feature’ in the novel. The article features a quote from Agatha Christie biographer Laura Thompson:

‘The ABC Murders is a stunning book and is incredibly atmospheric. Why does anyone feel the need to do more to it? Some of the changes sound awful. It’s like everyone who is a Brexiteer has to be shown the error of their ways.’ 

Back to The Sunday Times though, where the doyenne of radio reviewers, Gillian Reynolds, thinking of a Christmas present for Evan Davis, hits the snail on the shell when describing Evan as sounding "possibly too relaxed" on PM these days. No "possibly" about it, I'd say. It's as if he's already in his dressing gown and wearing his favourite slippers:

You will recall that, after Mair quit PM, there was a decent interval while BBC contracts sorted out what it could afford to pay his replacement, Newsnight decided whether it wanted to keep him, and he carefully considered the bliss of never again having to express admiration for the dress sense of Emily Maitlis. Now he has had a couple of months in the new Radio 4 job, Davis sounds relaxed. Possibly too relaxed. So he’s going to get a giant pack of impatience tablets, as used by John Pienaar and Emma Barnett, guaranteed to get an answer even out of Theresa May. 

Ah, now for some bacon and eggs...

To accompany your bacon and eggs...

Some BBC-related reading to accompany your Sunday breakfast...

First Gillian Reynolds in The Sunday Times:

It is not necessarily the best course to replace a male presenter with a female one. Sara Cox is not as good as Clive Anderson at hosting Radio 4’s Loose Ends. Talking to Cliff Richard last Saturday, her anxiety flooded the airwaves and drowned the show. 

Nor is it inevitable that one woman will do as well as another in any job. Lauren Laverne, standing in for Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs, is a severe disappointment, all marshmallow, no nuts. The BBC, in haste to correct years of discrimination in appointments and remuneration, is doing no one any favours by preferment apparently based more on gender than on ability.

Secondly, Adam Boulton in The Sunday Times:

The BBC is world-famous for a decision-making structure of a complexity matched only by that of the Indian civil service. For a while it looked as though understandable editorial qualms might prevent a counterbid [over the Brexit Deal debate]. But [Robbie] Gibb makes no secret of his admiration for the BBC over all other broadcasters, and has close personal ties to many of his former colleagues in news and current affairs. There is a certain kind of BBC person incapable of talking about anything other than the BBC. The corporation’s eventual proposal was to May’s liking: no live audience and questions from a panel of businesspeople, who, in desperation, are inclining towards her agreement.

Thirdly, The Mail on Sunday: 

• New BBC Sounds app allowing users to listen to the radio and download shows is slammed despite £10million marketing campaign.
• Listeners flooded social media with complaints about the BBC's new service.
• One said the app was worse than the iPlayer Radio that it will replace next year.
• BBC Sounds brings 18 national and 40 local radio stations together in one app.
• A BBC spokesman said: 'BBC Sounds is already superior to the iPlayer Radio app.'

Gillian Reynolds on podcasting and BBC bias

Monkey Brains wrote a little earlier: "I heard Gillian Reynolds, the grand dame of Radio reviewers on Desert Island Discs criticising the BBC for allowing politicised presenters to identify with certain political positions. The BBC can't dismiss her view can they? Well they can, but not so easily as with us plebs."

Well, here a transcript of that part of the discussion. I wonder exactly which BBC political presenters  she had in mind?

Kirsty Young: Let's talk a little bit Gillian Reynolds then, a little bit more, about the trade, the profession if you will, of the critic. You've described podcasts as "ready meals, dinners for one" - what a great little phrase! Could you just explain a bit of that? What do you mean? 

Gillian Reynolds: I'm mildly resistant to the podcast because there are a lot of people now whose business it is to say, "This is the saving of audio". It's not the saving of audio. It's just audio branching out.

Kirsty Young: You did a podcast for a while at the Telegraph. Did you enjoy it?

Gillian Reynolds: We did a six-week thing. Nobody encouraged us, and they dropped without notice and without acknowledgement. But I am delighted to say that my co-presenter then, Pete Norton, is now head of podcasting at the Telegraph, so maybe their ideas are changing. Maybe I was slightly ahead of the wave.  

Kirsty Young: I mean, they are hugely popular, aren't they? And people download podcasts in their tens of millions.

Gillian Reynolds: Tens of millions, yes. Worldwide too.

Kirsty Young: Yes indeed. And also people can say things that they wouldn't say in front of a live mike, that they wouldn't be allowed to make the edit on Radio 4. In a way that's kind of the joy of them. The stays are off, if you will.

Gillian Reynolds: The stays are off. Now, there are good things about that - people can talk about their anorexia or their sexual problems or their problems with their frightful mother and so on - that's really good. And it is a new forum, it's more personal and will find its own audience. The slightly dangerous thing I think for the BBC is that you've got political presenters who are meant to maintain steadfast independence of any political viewpoint occasionally seeming to nudge into one shade or opinion or another, and I think that's actually quite dangerous. And I think someone ought to have a serious think about it before they get too carried away.

Kirsty Young: Time for some music...