Nigel Kennedy v The Bleeb Bleeb C

Richard Morrison's Times review of Nigel Kennedy's autobiography made me chuckle, especially the violinist's run-ins with the BBC. I remembered the earlier spats but didn't know about this one:

Later Kennedy caused friction at the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms [back in 2013] where he appeared alongside two formidably woke American women: the conductor Marin Alsop and the singer Joyce DiDonato (neither of whom Kennedy names). Irritated that DiDonato had declared that she would be dedicating her performance “to transgender people around the world” (“WOT D FUKK?? WHY?” Kennedy asks, not unreasonably), the violinist announced at his rehearsal with the BBC Symphony Orchestra that he was dedicating his performance “to all the forgotten and displaced heteros”.

“As I finished my sentence,” he writes, “my eyes rested on the front of the viola section. I saw two very unamused women glowering at me as if heterosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to be recognised or celebrate anything. The conductor also seemed rather unsupportive.”

I bet she did. “The Bleeb Bleeb C [sic] won’t make shows with me any more,” Kennedy observes. “Jimmy Savile was OK, but apparently I’m not.”

Some Sunday morning reading

I

According to The Mail on Sunday, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries will use her conference speech to 'throw down the gauntlet to the BBC'. A source has told them:

The plan is to put the BBC on notice that its days as the voice of the Islington Left are numbered. 

Nadine appreciates that it has a global reputation for the quality of many of its programmes, but the woke-infested news output needs addressing.

We'll see. Anyhow, there's a good quote from Nadine in The Sun: 

I could almost hear the almond latte cups hitting the floor at the BBC when I got this job. 

II 

Former BBC controller of daily news programmes Gavin Allen, ousted from the BBC board in February this year, has moved on. He's now working as 'executive editor in chief' for the highly controversial Chinese tech giant Huawei. From seeing him on Newswatch many times, always sticking up for the BBC, I suspect it won't be long before he's saying that Huawei is getting everything about right. The top comment at The Mail on Sunday reads, 'No honour, no integrity. These are the sort of people that run the BBC.' 

III

I suspect many will agree with The Times's Richard Morrison about the BBC's 'sordid' Jimmy Savile drama, starring Steve Coogan:

It was the BBC that fuelled his career and gave him a nationwide, peak-time platform. And despite all the allegations, it was still protecting and projecting his “saintly eccentric” image when he died, less than ten years ago. For such a tainted organisation to be thinking about using the name of Savile once again — after all that has been revealed — to boost its ratings and generate publicity for its TV drama output beggars belief. 

I’m surprised that Coogan, a thoughtful man, has accepted this role. I’m astounded that Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, has approved the project, especially with all the other battles he needs to fight to safeguard the BBC’s future. He should think again.

IV

This week answered the question on everyone's lips: Whatever happened to the 'face of the BBC' in the US, Katty Kay? Well, she left the BBC to work for Ozy - a left-wing digital media outfit that sees itself as "a catalyst for change and inspiration" and which launched the #ResetAmerica campaign to amplify racial and social injustice issues and "forge a path forward". After its chief operating officer was accused of pretending to be a YouTube executive on a conference call during talks about a £30m investment from Goldman Sachs, Katty Kay quit. So the question on everyone's lips is now: Whatever will happen to the 'face of the BBC' in the US, Katty Kay, now that she's left Ozy?

Unsurprising news

Richard Morrison, writing in The Times, notes the result of a survey conducted among nearly 200 TV programme-makers and executives at the Edinburgh TV Festival, doubtless involving large numbers from the BBC. 

They were asked to divulge their views about a variety of social issues and the results were compared to a poll of nearly 3,000 TV viewers.

Unsurprisingly, while the majority of TV viewers were 'proud of the UK', thought political correctness has 'gone too far' and are NOT 'ashamed of the British Empire', the vast majority of TV-makers and executives thought the opposite. 

Only 27 per cent of TV executives and programme-makers are 'proud of the UK', only 23 per cent think political correctness has 'gone too far' and just 19 percent are NOT 'ashamed of the British Empire'. [And my guess is that most of those aren't the ones working for the BBC].

As Mr Morrison says, that's a ''sociopolitical gulf between them and the majority of the public''. 

He talks of ''TV’s mad scramble to be woker-than-woke'', with independent producers ''having to supply evidence of cast and crew diversity when they pitch ideas to networks'' and ''storylines for soaps, serious dramas and even Doctor Who being manipulated so that issues can be given far greater prominence than they would if the dramas strictly mirrored reality'' and ''current affairs programmes and documentaries being skewered to favour the viewpoint of what’s usually labelled the metropolitan liberal elite''.

But he suspects this doesn’t happen ''because programme-makers are passionate about championing social justice'', given that ''most of them live in Holland Park in London on salaries well north of six figures'', but that it happens ''because they are supinely following quota rules issued from above''.

What has happened, Richard Morrison argues, is that the pendulum has swung too far, 

...possibly because of the “must please management” mentality ingrained into every organisation - even one where employees imagine themselves as creative and free-thinking. Pragmatism, common sense, moderation and subtlety go out of the window. Then programme-makers find themselves way out of step with the public, and people start asking themselves why they should pay the licence fee. 

A population as stubborn as the British will never respond well to arrogant preaching or their favourite shows being hijacked to represent views they don’t hold. Quite the reverse. People switch off. Government ministers sniff blood. Views polarise and harden, and fundamentally worthwhile institutions are threatened with break-up.

And he ends with a question:

Those delegates in Edinburgh did well to expose the sociopolitical gulf between themselves and the majority of the public. Now who’s going to be brave enough, clever enough and humble enough to bridge it?

The will to live

Am I the only one who’s starting to think of death as a blessed relief? No. I’ve heard others saying something similar.

Two of the most depressing things I’ve seen recently. (In the interest of balance and fairness, the Guardian is in our sidebar.)

“We should completely close the borders … enough is enough”

This audience member says the number of people ’flooding in’ to the UK is costing public services too much. #bbcqt pic.twitter.com/T5EshhWqQu

— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) February 20, 2020

One. Owen Jones, supposedly railing against ‘hate’ The BBC normalised racism last night, pure and simple

‘Yet Question Time then saw fit to clip the 82 seconds of hate, accompanied by a succinct summary of the audience member’s rant. Lies and hatred, uncorrected and unchallenged, rippled across social media from the account of the BBC’s self-described “flagship political debate programme”

this, followed by a rant against the BBC for ‘allowing it’, a spittle-flecked reference to ”racist thug and convicted fraudster” Tommy Robinson and, in conclusion, something about a prime minister with a history of racism. All in all, an unadulterated outpouring of hate. Pure and simple. (oh for a  soupçon of self-awareness) 

and

Two: Marina Hyde, in the same publication, writing about Priti Patel’s ‘perma smirk’. It takes one to know one I suppose, but Marina’s perma-expression is more of a sneer than a smirk.

Those two examples of ‘left’ (for virtue) against ‘right’ (for vice) featured high in yesterday’s Guardian’s ‘most popular’ rankings. Incidentally, Matthew Parris has also had a go at Patel in the Times. I’m no particular fan of Priti Patel, and I know nothing of bullying within the Department for International Development, (how could I?) but I do know that her off-piste dealings with Israel showed a spark of independence and imagination that I admired at the time. Parris described this as ‘a monumental error”.  Typical.

Then there’s that intellectual giant and philosophical lyricist “Dave” whose brilliance and originality Is being so much admired.

The general downgrading of everything was encapsulated in a snippet on the Today programme within a conversation between Mishal Husain and Chris Mason (why?) extolling the virtues of regional accents.  There’s regional accents and there’s lazy, dumbed down, ungrammatical, illiterate patois.

Slightly consoling though, is the knowledge that Douglas Murray has written (in the Speccie) about the Beeb’s dumbed-down arts coverage How low can the BBC go? and Richard Morrison (in the Times)  The arts world is tolerant, as long as you’re left wing and anti-Brexit about the arts community’s wokeness and the new totalitarianism of the left. At least there are masses of appreciative responses.

They could almost restore the will to live.