What Is This Thing Called Twitter?

I've had a Twitter account for seven or eight months and frankly I've hardly used it because I still don't get it. I'm told that until you've got x followers then no, you don't get it but in reality I have yet to see anything interesting on Twitter that stirs the vaguest interest in my jaded brain. Even Stephen Fry, who's blog I read avidly for its elegant use of language and ideas has failed to maintain my interest in Twitter for more than a couple of tweets and as for Jonathan Ross, well his many daily tweets are rapidly causing me to re-evaluate him. Twitter is, I believe, the digital equivalent of the Kings New Suit of Clothes and those that are twittering are desperately trying to justify the time investment by professing a relevance that just doesn't pertain. I'll persist for now but I'm waiting expectantly for some shining moment of revelation.

To Twitter or Not To Twitter?

I've been a moderate Twitter user since Twitter first poked its beak over the parapet but, to be frank, I just don't really get the whole Twitter thing. Shorts tweets of peoples mundane random thoughts are just annoying and why the inane ramblings of millions of vacant brains, mine included, should be clogging up bandwidth is anyones guess. Anyway, I'm luke warm on the idea from the get go but then I learn that the Ross/Brand axis is twittering away good-oh and the whole idea begins to look like the chattering classes are beginning to invade every space I once thought I was safe in. It's as though every vertical surface of every city on the planet has been fly-posted with the dreary banalities of even drearier celebs. There's no escape except to vacate the twittesphere forthwith. I've already been driven from Radio 2 by this desperate duo I need a good reason not to be exiled from Twitter and thankfully here it comes in the unexpected form of Stephen Fry who, it would seem, is a Twitter user of some stature if his followers figures are to be believed. 

I still don't get Twitter but I'll give it one more chance because of Mr Fry. 

Lucky Twitter.

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.