Rat Rebranding On Course

They said it was a waste of money. They said the reputation had slipped too far down the slope of slime. It would never recover from the Black Death Thing and the living in the sewers thing and the eating anything and everything err..thing. But they were wrong and here's the proof. Cuddly or what. Personally I think this one is slightly fey but hey, it's a PR triumph and Raatchi & Raatchi have done a majestic re-branding job and worth every red cent. Two legged world rulers (current) seem to go all gooey over Pablo here who's had a few extensions, a fluff-up and blow dry, some orthodontics and little Prozac to prevent from biting the bejazus out of the moron who's holding his tail but, all-in-all it's a major coup for Rodentiae.

Look out world the rats are back on the front page. Next stop Vogue.

On the plus side I'm so glad to see that he still retains some of his gutter ways - eating your own dandruff is just so street, man. Way to go!

Rat Curse Strikes - Part the First

Shortly after a mention on this blog, wild Boris Johnson twin Carol Thatcher is in very hot water indeed for the use of the g-word in the hallowed and, it has to be said, shit-scared halls of the BBC. Apparently, as repoted in The Guardian, Ms Thatcher compared a tennis player in the Australian Open to a g-man (sorry folks, can't say it, PC police are everywhere and they know where I live ) and presenter Adrian Chiles and Jo Brand were so appalled that they immediately complained to the producer.
Carol Thatcher's response is eagerly awaited and whether Boris is going to support his twin is yet to be confirmed.

Is it just me or are these McCarthy-esque witch hunts on hapless reactionaries taking on a very dark demeanour. Messrs Chiles and Brand had already confronted the frenetic Thatcher immediately in private, do they really need the publicity so badly that they have to escalate what is probably a brain fart into a major diplomatic incident. The BBCs mimosa-like reaction is entirely predictable and no doubt Thatcher will be cast upon the stakes of correctness forthwith but really is this all that's exercising our minds at this particular point in history? I almost, repeat almost, feel sorry for her.

Oops bummer. It was a twitter post not this blog in which I compared Carol and Boris so the curse does not apply. Please completely ignore all of the foregoing.

All the same I don't think I've ever seem them in the same room. Hmm.

Settled Dust?

Now the Brand/Ross brouhaha is calming down and Mr Brand has departed the Beeb and Mr Ross is in detention it's time to re-visit to try to work out just what the hell happened. As far as I can gather the show itself only garnered two quite mild complaints. It was the Mail what done it! After an article appeared in the Mail on Sunday a positive a positive tsunami of complaints welled up and consumed the message boards, blogs, emails, listeners forums etc. My own small contribution was just one such. So how to explain this swell of righteous indignation. My assumption is that, like me, many people have been turning away from the Brand/Ross axis of 'humour' largely put off by the presenters' own tendency to go way over the top. As far a Russell Brand is concerned I never listened to him much anyway not because I dislike his stuff but because he was just on at the wrong time and time-shifting by podcast is not yet in my lexicon of available options. Anytime I did listen to him I found him zanily entertaining and only mildly offensive never enough to raise a protest or to switch off. Jonathan Ross on the other hand overstepped the mark so often and with such puerile innuendo that I made a positive decision not to watch or listen to him again but like, I suspect, many others I didn't protest just voted with my off switch. It now appears that there were quite a few of us because the woodwork yielded the tidal wave of approbation that was visited on the BBC post-Sachs. So the Andrew Sachs affair was just the catalyst that released the pent up torrent of dissatisfaction with JRs childishly smutty technique. Sadly Russell Brand and Lesley Duncan have born the brunt of the listening public's disapproval and Mr Ross seems to have suffered a mild wrist slap. Personally I would have reversed the penalties but that's not the world we live in. Jonathan Ross is the senior presenter, is probably paid more, I suspect is more intelligent, knows better, and is much much older. He should know better. He is undoubtedly clever and, I believe, doesn't need to descend to the levels which he has plumbed so regularly.

Enough about the main protagonists and on to the BBC whose inability to have nipped this furore in the bud is simply staggering. Not to have a senior figure in place to be able to head this kind of outcry off at an early stage with the relevant apology and promises of rolling heads etc. etc. is extraordinary. Hopefully they'll learn some lessons from this and we wont see a repeat of this level of ineptitude from our public broadcaster again.

Shock Jocks? Time To Grow Up?

So the BBC has been forced to apologise for lewd messages left on Andrew Sachs' mobile messaging service. I think lewd is a fairly mild term for saying that you had 'fucked' Mr Sachs granddaughter. I've long since stopped listening to or watching Jonathan Ross because of his mysogynistic innuendo which I personally find tediously juvenile and frankly pretty insulting to his guests. It came to a head, if you'll pardon the pun, when he suggested to Katie Price that he was going to go home and 'crack one off' having interviewed her. Jordan, to her credit laughed it off but I found it fairly gratuitously insulting and ceased watching to Ross from that moment onward. Now I don't think that my embargo is going to cause Mr Ross to loose much sleep but I feel better and less 'unclean' for my decision. 

Unfortunately not enough people seem to hold my view so we've now been exposed to the awful synergy of Ross and Brand seemingly stoking each other up to an unacceptable level - unacceptable to at lest 500 listeners and the BBCs subsequent apology. Quite apart from the utter rudeness and lack of consideration of this so-called 'prank', it's the kind of thing most boys grew out of before the age of twenty, the abuse of their respective positions just sticks in the gullet. As far as I'm aware the propagation of obscene messages over the public communications network is an offence so why aren't the boys in blue charging these morons pour encouragé les autres? 

More annoying still is the fact that both of these presenters are really bright people who could be using their talents in amazingly creative ways instead of taking the easy option. I'm not holding my breath.

Die Another Day

As I travelled to work yesterday, listening to the breathless hyperbole of Andrew Marr on the firing up of the CERN death-ray, er Large Hadron Collider, I realised that the world was going to end as I was going to work and I was going to miss all the fun but then I reminded myself that I could always watch it again when I got home on the BBC iPlayer. Ain't technology brilliant!