Saturday 29 November 2014

I haven’t been asked to guest edit Radio 4's Today Programme – but Lenny Henry has! What's that about?

My write-in campaign has evidently yet again failed to sway the executives who decide this sort of thing. Pity, because I fancied asking on the American economist Thomas Sowell to explain why the EU is doomed (and to introduce the great man to a wider audience); the new SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon to ask her exactly what she doesn't understand about the word "lost"; Michael Deacon to discuss the great tradition of conservative political satire and to hazard a guess as to why left-wing satire is so achingly unfunny; a really nasty, shouty debate between razor-sharp economic historian Niall Ferguson and the NYT's resident economics pseudo-expert, Paul Krugman; a debate between Douglas Murray and Russell Brand to demonstrate the difference between an immensely clever, sensible person and a cosmically stupid blabbermouth...

...Jane Berthoud, the head of BBC Radio 4 comedy who will be played clips from some of the dire shows she has commissioned and then asked to explain what exactly is meant to be funny about them; David Cameron, to (a) explain why he promised to bring EU immigration down when he knew this wasn’t in his power, and (b) tell us what, if anything, he actually believes in - apart from his right to be in power - because it really isn't obvious; Roger Scruton on… well anything he wants to talk about, actually, because it's bound to enrage Today's goofy left-wing audience; Julian Fellowes, if he promises to reveal the identity of the famous left-wing actor who tried to get him thrown off a BBC drama series because of his politics; Roger Federer who will be examined live on air by a team of scientists to confirm that the sun does indeed shine out of his fundament (though I believe Speaker John Bercow – another guest editor – may have  already arranged this for his programme); an utterly unbalanced discussion on man-made climate change netween James Delingpole, Mark Steyn, Lord Lawson and Viscount Monckton to balance the propaganda pumped out by BBC's "environment analyst", Roger Harrabin - and just about everyone else the corporation asks to speak on the subject; a chat with Bob Geldof on why he doesn’t concentrate on solving problems closer to home (say drug addiction among show business types) rather than on guilt-tripping relatively poor people into contributing money to solve problems which the international community is already addressing using the taxes those relatively poor people have already paid.

I’d finish off with a "British CAUC of the Year" special feature, which would culminate with first prize being awarded to one of our specially-invited studio guests, who would include David Mellor, Andrew Mitchell, Piers Morgan, Nick Clegg, David “Shingy” Shing  (okay he’s foreign, but I’ll make an exception in his case) Russell Brand, Emily Thornberry, Ian Katz (the derangedly left-wing editor of Newsnight) - Sharon Shoesmith, Diane Abbott, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Tristram Hunt, and every other public figure I can’t abide: we may have to hire the Albert Hall. As guest editor, I would get to choose the winner, and the presentation ceremony (including a five-hour compilation of Jimmy Savile’s BBC appearances over FIVE decades, which the winner would be forced to watch before being allowed to leave Broadcasting House, using one of those Clockwork Orange-style torture devices) would end with me slapping the winner’s face. Again and again.

Oh yes, there’s one other item I forget to mention: an interview with the BBC Director General during which Lord Hall would be repeatedly challenged to explain why his organisation has dedicated itself so slavishly to maintaining the career of one has-been Birmingham-born “comedian” whose appeal to the public would appear to be highly questionable, but who seems – for reasons that are quite beyond me – to have special access to the DG, and whose personal obsessions have led to the BBC altering its hiring policy in order to ensure that blacks will be deliberately advantaged at the expense of whites when it comes to employment at the corporation – in contravention, surely, of this country’s grotesquely unfair “equality” laws.

I presume the gig wasn’t offered to Doreen Lawrence because she’s a Labour peer: there cannot be any other credible explanation.

3 comments:

  1. How on earth did you manage to stay there so long? You seem to be the embodiment of the anti-BBC. This, of course, is a Good Thing.

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    1. Because it was pretty well paid, the work was genuinely interesting, you could move from one department to another when you got bored, the people were nice and generally very bright, and because I spent the last five years working in a department which had nothing to do with political propaganda. Mind you, those eighteen years did end up costing me my sanity - as must be ovious from this blog.

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  2. "CAUC of the Year." Taken aback that you missed Radio 4's very own Hardeep Singh Kholi and the Reverend Richard Coles.

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