Manuel-gate: Did the BBC go far enough? Was it too all much of a fuss over nothing?

“Yes, it’s OK to sometimes say things to offend others” - Helen Doyle

Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross recorded a radio show for BBC Radio 2 on the 16th October this year. It was broadcast on Saturday 18th October after the watershed of 9pm to a listenership that averages 400,000 people.

Two people complained after hearing the show at the time of broadcast and that was that.
Well not quite.

Eight days later the Sunday papers picked up on the story and what ensued in the following week, in my eyes was one of the most ridiculous media storms I have ever witnessed.

I don’t think that the phone calls made to Andrew Sachs (most famous for playing Manuel in Fawlty Towers) were particularly funny and I’m sure they did cause offence both to him and his granddaughter, Georgina Baillie.

But come on, did that offence really justify the moral majority brigade coming out of the woodwork to try and dictate to the rest of us what is and isn’t funny?

A simply apology, which in fairness both Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand made, was all that was necessary. But the only thing that would satisfy the 27,000 complaints from people who hadn’t even heard the show and let’s be honest probably wouldn’t listen the programme normally, was the immediate dismissal and near execution of the two stars involved.

In my eyes this was a cynical attempt by those in the media who don’t like Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand to stand up on the moral high ground and throw stones down on them.

They objected to the money Jonathan Ross gets paid, they objected to their sense of humour, they objected to and vilified the two of them for being the individuals that they are. The very reason why they get paid so much and why they attract so many viewers and listerners to their radio shows.

It’s OK to be an individual who doesn’t think like everybody else, it’s OK to laugh at things other people won’t and yes it’s OK to sometimes say things to offend others. It’s called free speech and the right to express yourself as you wish (as long as it’s not against the law).

Sky News nearly gave themselves a stroke they were in such a frenzy over this story. All the national newspapers and all the national TV stations led their news bulletins with this story…for 5 days!

The war in the Congo, the complete collapse of the world’s economy’s, the historical American Election, our pensioners losing their medical cards.

Did anyone else think these were more important stories to hear about?

I don’t like and get offended by a lot of stuff that gets broadcast both here and in England.

Tommy Tiernan not being funny on the Late Late Show, Katherine Lynch’s Wonderwomen, Gerry Ryan and Ryan Tubridy’s radio shows, Xpose, BBC Nothern Ireland(not one good programme?), Hollyoaks and Kerry Katona’s Whole Again horror show.

But do you know what I do? I switch it off or turn over. If you don’t look to get offended you probably won’t.

“Jonathan Ross should have been shown the door” - Samuel Hamilton

If you flick through the newspaper reports of Manuelgate, you will find a common thread to all of them: the suggestion that anyone under the age of thirty had no problem with the messages that were left on Andrew Sachs’ answerphone.

But, I am well under the age of thirty, and I did have a problem with the messages.

In all the moral codes that we live our lives by, there is no way around the simple fact that it isn’t right to leave messages on a 78-year-old man’s answerphone saying you have “fucked” his granddaughter before joking that he is probably going to kill himself when he finds out.

Anyone who calls that comedy is an idiot. That is not comedy, it is two highly paid, so-called comedians abusing someone who is old enough to be the recipient of a free bus pass.

If the two stars had whipped Sachs’ body with the hose from a vacuum cleaner, they would have been charged with assault faster than you can get Jodie Marsh to agree to turn up the opening of a nightclub.

But, because they only assaulted him with their not-so-harmless words on pre-recorded radio, they pretty much get off scot free.

Don’t think that Russell Brand will suffer. The same week he quit the BBC he was hosting his Ponderland show on Channel 4, writing his column for The Guardian, and getting ready for the release of a new film he starts in.

And what about Jonathan Ross, the person who caused the whole furore? Well, he might as well have been given a few lines of coke by the BBC along with a note telling him to celebrate.

Being suspended for a few months from his BBC radio and television shows won’t hurt him at all. It might cost him around a million pounds, but when you earn six million pounds a year for doing all of nothing, you won’t be seeing him begging for pennies or selling the Big Issue outside Tesco anytime soon.

It is the people who didn’t tell Andrew Sachs that they had “fucked” Georgina Baillie who are facing hard times. It is everyone who helps broadcast Brand and Ross’ programmes, behind the scenes, who will be wondering what they will be doing for Christmas.

You don’t employ a freelance producer to do nothing for three months. These people who thought they had safe employment are the people who are truly being punished.

What should have happened, of course, was that Jonathan Ross should have been shown the door by the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson. By merely suspending him he showed, in one cowardly decision, who truly runs the BBC: the expensive talent that draws in viewers.

Mark Thompson still has time to flex his muscles. He can still sack Ross, and he should do. Sadly, putting him in the stocks and pelting him with tomatoes, before sacking him, isn’t an option in the times we live in.