Jonathan Ross is someone I find really quite offensive and unpleasant at the best of times. I absolutely hate the cringe-making content of his Friday night show - I am not averse to the odd F word, but I can’t stand smutty talk about sexual subjects, particularly when I’m watching it in any company, particularly older company. Which is why I’m rather glad they have suspended him after the incident involving Russell Brand and Andrew “Manuel” Sachs’s granddaughter. Frankly, if anyone had rung my granddad and told him, while broadcasting it to millions of people on the radio, that he had f**ked my sister, I would want him off the air at the very least. I didn’t hear it, but this woman did, or at least read the transcript.
What’s even more galling is that there is any real debate about whether these two should be given the push. On the BBC station I usually listen to, BBC London, if a caller-in swears, he is off the line that second (see earlier post). There are no second chances, even if it happens late at night (especially, in fact, since Jumoké Fashola tends to be stricter about it than, say, Vanessa Feltz). Why is there one rule for highly-paid presenters, who surely are given a load of paperwork with the rules clearly printed on it before they go on air, and another for the general public, who learn the rules only by listening to the show for a few weeks and hearing a woman who’s dying of cancer get cut off for using the F word? If anyone should be getting sacked, rather than suspended, it’s Ross who actually used the phrase in question.
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