{"id":3549,"date":"2008-10-29T18:33:15","date_gmt":"2008-10-29T17:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=3549"},"modified":"2009-01-24T01:26:29","modified_gmt":"2009-01-24T01:26:29","slug":"russell-brand-and-jonathan-ross-call-andrew-sachs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2008\/10\/29\/russell-brand-and-jonathan-ross-call-andrew-sachs\/","title":{"rendered":"Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross call Andrew Sachs"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you have been on holiday over the last few days (like BBC chief Mark Thomspon<\/a>) you might have missed the incredible media storm<\/a> over a phone call\u00a0Russell Brand<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Jonathan Ross<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0made to Fawlty Towers<\/a> actor Andrew Sachs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It actually went out on Brand’s Radio 2 show<\/a> on Saturday 18th October (after being pre-recorded on Thursday 16th), but after the Mail on Sunday<\/a> put the story on their front page all hell has broken loose with both of them getting suspended<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0even the Prime Minister condemning them<\/a> (!).<\/p>\n

The BBC aren’t rebroadcasting it, so if you missed it then here it is in 2 parts:<\/p>\n

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<\/object><\/p>\n

Here is their ‘viddycast’ after the show in which the commented on the call:<\/p>\n

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Although the whole thing has got out of hand, the main reason it spiralled out of control is the combination of the BBC not responding soon enough<\/a>, shock amongst an older generation of licence fee payers that this kind of comedy goes on<\/a> (even though it originally went out at after 10pm on a Saturday night) and a media feeding frenzy because this story has so many juicy elements that editors and hacks love (celebrity, outrage, the licence fee and even a classic TV show to boot).<\/p>\n

Whatever you think about the original calls and reaction to them, one has to wonder why the BBC were so slow to react to a story like this.<\/p>\n

Last night on Newsnight<\/a> (the flagship current affairs show on BBC2) host Gavin Esler<\/a> was in the surreal position of having a debate without<\/em> a senior BBC figure. (David Elstein<\/a> and comedian Nick Doody<\/a> were left to discuss it – the segment appears at 26 mins into the programme, which you can watch on iPlayer<\/a>)<\/p>\n

After the trauma of the Hutton Report<\/a>, the Blue Peter cat fiasco<\/a>, Crowngate<\/a>, not to mention the amount of time and money spent on retraining BBC journalists and producers<\/a> about guidelines, you do have to ask how this pre-recorded show went out and why BBC management collectively passed the buck for 2 days whilst the story exploded in their face.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 29\/10\/08: Russell Brand has now resigned and issued a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

> Download an MP3 of the call<\/a>
\n> Find out more about Russell Brand<\/a> and Jonathan Ross<\/a> at Wikipedia
\n> BBC News report<\/a>\u00a0on the story and also have a timeline of events<\/a>
\n> Maggie Brown of The Guardian on the affair<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you have been on holiday over the last few days (like BBC chief Mark Thomspon) you might have missed the incredible media storm over a phone call\u00a0Russell Brand\u00a0and\u00a0Jonathan Ross\u00a0made to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs. It actually went out on Brand’s Radio 2 show on Saturday 18th October (after being pre-recorded on Thursday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[110,771,2787,653],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}