Latest BBC Scandal

Gentlemen,


I've long been a user of your services and up until now have always regarded you an excellent supplier of quality programming. I have every faith therefore that you will do what you can to rectify this problem.

Children cannot act and they should not be allowed on television. All the parts of characters who are children should be played by women or animals. Circus animals.

To resolve the problem I require you to reshoot the children’s drama The Story of Tracy Beaker with an appropriate cast, whilst reserving my right to claim against you.

I look forward to hearing from you and to a resolution of this problem. I will wait for 24 hours before arranging for this matter to be corrected by a third party at your cost.






Yours faithfully,


Angus Porterhouse

What does England think? British opinions on the US election

As British networks filled time between polls closing, reporters are grabbed influential Brits to test the pulse of the Old Country.

Always ready with an opinion is Christopher Hitchens: “I think it’s a zeitgeist change. It’s an historic, seismic change. The middle-class has flipped hard against the Republican Party. On its watch all the important things about the American Dream have gone sour.”

Even comic Ricky Gervais had his two cents: “I’ve never been interested in politics. I rarely vote in Britain but I’ve been caught up in it. When I saw Barack Obama for the first time it was just amazing. He hasn’t put a foot wrong, except for being elitist and intelligent."

Comedian and actor Eddie Izzard had probably been drinking: “Looks like the BBC is already projecting Obama to win. It’s fantastic. The third millennium begins tonight – maybe in half an hour. Slavery is just over. Well, not over. I think it will be great for America. I think it will be great for the world.”

Simon Schama, historian looking to the future as the BBC starts to get carried away: “Obama is a world figure who, in an instinctive sense, is more likely to use diplomacy. You cannot possibly overestimate the way this will be seen as a new America because it has Barack Obama as President.”

What strikes me is the change in the commentators themselves. Hitchens is usually seen as a cynical realist and occasionally even a conservative for his agreement with the Party on Iraq. Gervais usually doesn’t care. Now these two, like so many others, are themselves a part of the seismic shift they are observing, as well as of the sense of idealism that pervades the Obama side of this election.

Obama Wins: BBC calls election for Obama.

The 44th President of the United States will be Barack Obama.


11pm: East coast polling closes and states are officially projected for Barack Obama. California was called first. Washington followed seconds later, bringing Obama votes to over the required 270 and sending him into the White House.

ABC, CNN, NBC and the BBC have call the election for the Democratic candidate.

Victory marks the end of a momentous campaign. Mobilising thousands upon thousands of volunteers a much more democratic model of campaigning built support from the ground up, encountering wild enthusiasm among the young -- they have realised it is their time.

People who had never felt engaged by the political process before have become involved. The celebrations will be enormous, although they may be brief. The problems facing a nation in debt and at war are immense. So the honeymoon may be short, there will be one heck of a party tonight.

The crowds are cheering, the flags are waving in Chicago. Rev. Jesse Jackson is in tears. The people spoke tonight and they spoke loudly and clearly. And so did the world.

In Kenya, in a sleepy village in the early morning, there is dancing in the streets. In Chicago they will dance through the night; Kenyans are dancing into the morning; we are singing in our hearts.

BBC urged to call election for Obama; argument ensues

Noted historian Simon Schama let his Obama support get the better of him when he interrupted a reptort to ask the show’s host,

“Aren’t you going to call the election, David?”

Host David Dimbleby, who had earlier announced that Fox News wasn’t good enough for the BBC to report an Obama victory in Ohio, responded by questioning Schama’s credibility as an historian and chastising him for wanting to report the story before having all the facts.

Although at the time Schama was sitting next to the staunch Republican US Ambassador to the UN, an unusually quiet John Bolton made no comment. Even strong Republican supporters are beginning to realise that it’s over.

The silence didn't last long as the truth sank in. Bolton later demanded that the BBC fire one of its interviewers who was continually asking for reactions to the Republican defeat.

Distraught prank call victim blasts “shocking” BBC and “cruel sickos” Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.

As anger mounts over the antics of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, Georgina Baillie steps forward to publicly condemn the pair and the BBC for their actions.

Andrew Sachs, beloved star of the classic British comedy Fawlty Towers, was to be interviewed by churlish fad Russell Brand for the latter's radio show. But when they could only get hold of his answering machine, Brand and guest boor Jonathan Ross responded by making a series of lewd phone calls to the 78-year-old veteran actor impugning the sexual conduct of his granddaughter and suggesting his suicide.

They called Sachs again to apologise for the original comments, but instead sang a song repeating the allegations.

Responding publically for the first time, the subject of the claims, Sachs' granddaughter Georgina Baillie said that she and her grandfather were “distraught” and “devastated” by the broadcast. Brand had made comments suggesting her grandfather might hang himself, and it is these Georgina identified as the most distressing.

A half-hearted apology from Brand via voicemail had led her to believe that it went out live and she was later “shocked” to find out that the prerecording was transmitted unedited.

Branding the pair “sick” and calling for them to be sacked, Georgina concluded that it is “sad that this is what entertainment has come to on the BBC”.

The interview will appear tommorow morning in London's Sun newspaper.