Today’s Daily Telegraph contains the astonishing revelation that in the late 1980s, the Dr Who production team was basically a left-wing cadre of anti-Thatcherites who wanted to “overthrow the government”, according to the seventh Dr Who, Sylvester McCoy, and the script editor, Andrew Cartmel.
“It seemed the right thing to do,” says Cartmel now. According to the paper, he added that detesting Mrs. Thatcher was almost a job requirement at the time.
Strange, the utter contempt the Left invariably feels for the electorate. Mrs. Thatcher had just been voted into power for the third time in a row in fair and free elections, and yet the “right thing to do” was to hijack a much-loved children’s programme paid for by the British Public who had just voted her in and stuff it full of anti-government propaganda. In other words, two fingers to Democracy. And to the BBC Charter. And to the license-payer. And to the principle that you shouldn’t exploit children.
What arrogant tits.
Mind you, the results could have been predicted – the show’s popularity plummeted.
Fast-forward to the Noughties and, bless my soul, nothing’s changed. I stopped watching Dr Who at least three seasons ago, as it seemed once more to have descended into a protracted exercise in left-wing propaganda, this time with a distinct New Labour flavour.
The show’s departing creator, Russell T. Davies, who has fled the delights of socialist Britain for the US, has promised that, if the Tories get in this year, he’ll “return and fight them on the barricades”. Departing star, David Tennant, who appeared in a 2005 Labour election broadcast, has described David Cameron as a “terrifying prospect”, and expressed astonishment that anyone involved in the arts could ever vote Tory. (Message to the 40% of the population preparing to vote for David Cameron: do not - I repeat - do not even begin to contemplate a career in The Arts; you do not possess sufficient “empathy” for suffering people, and it would really upset poor wee David Tennant.)
I expect the BBC gave both of these professional empathisers a jolly good carpeting for potentially damaging the Dr Who brand through their political posturing. Or maybe not. We’re so used to luvvies boring us with their tediously inevitable left-wing views, I’m not sure most people care any longer. And I’d be astonished if the bosses who should be chewing them out don’t share every predictable ego-serving sentiment.
Of course, this time around, the show didn’t suffer a drop in popularity – Davies and Tennant obviously have talent, even if they are delusional, self-important, modish air-heads.
All I can say is, thank God for Top Gear. I feel – and I really mean this – a genuine sense of gratitude to Richard Hammond, James May and Jeremy Clarkson for being so brazenly and unequivocally anti-Labour. I’m astonished, but delighted they still get away with it (I presume it’s because it’s the most successful BBC show in terms of global sales).
When I started work for Radio 2 in 1985, it was a surprise to discover that, as far as I could tell, I was surrounded by Thatcherites: not over-educated or particularly cultured, but patriotic and pro-Monarchy and equally mistrustful of the Labour Party and old-style Tory toffs. They were, I suppose, Tebbit’s people.
When I was offered a job in TV News in 1987 (to my utter astonishment – which quota could I possibly have helped fill: big bearded white males? Scots-Norwegians? Philosophy graduates with weird careers to date?) I tried to wipe my mind clean of all right-wing prejudice.
Everything I had read about BBC News and Current Affairs suggested it was run by a communist claque determined to overthrow the vicious Thatcherite junta that had – shamefully – made Britain a military and economic power once more. How dare they! (And thank God that thirteen years of Labour in power has again reduced us to penury and feebleness.)
I’m not saying there weren’t any other right-wingers working for BBC News in 1987. But only once in my ten years working on national news bulletins – exactlyonce - did I hear anyone give voice to a vaguely pro-Conservative sentiment in my presence.
During the run-up to the 1987 General Election, the Nine O’Clock News election team was listening to Thatch banging the drum at some rally or other. One of the subs got up from their seat, sighed and said, loudly, “God, she sounds just like a parrot, squawking away”, and flounced off, emitting what they imagined to be amusing parrot noises. My eyes met those of the producer sitting opposite me, who said, quietly, “Well, I think she’s all right”. “So do I,” I said.
I expect the same sort of furtive exchanges have taken place between homosexuals through the ages.
One of those two members of the production team is now a prominent member of the Tory shadow cabinet.
And it isn’t the producer who furtively voiced their support for Mrs. T.
As The Lady herself put it, “It’s a funny old world”.
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