How did Jonathan Ross come back from the Russell Brand/Andrew Sachs thing?

[Bandsis]

Quite apart from Russell Brand hiding in plain sight, how did Jonathan Ross ever work again?

This - all those women abused and it was a man being offended that resulted in action being taken and is the incident people remember. Sachsgate? How about woman a,b,c,d….. gate. Same as the Epstein issue - one person imprisoned - a woman - it tells us all how the world works and how little men are sanctioned for ill treatment of women. The problem is women like RBs wife - many women support the patriarchy as it serves their interests.

I think especially as Brand acknowledged the opportunities his "profession" gave him. In the court case there were horrifying examples of what he did "at work". It was a female BBC radio producer that lost their job over the humiliation of Sachsgate - it looked as if some couldn't resist the excitement of RB going too far (Ross comes over like this - someone admiring the perpetrator but not doing the main dirty work).

Absolutely. Well said.

I relate to this...I was in my twenties at this time - I loved buying the magazines and reading all the celebrity gossip. But they had articles like 'the circle of shame' where they would highlight any spots/cellulite/fat, etc on women. Or they would have whole articles on how some celebrity (almost always women) had gained weight. Women could be very cruel to women....but I didn't give it a lot of thought at the time - in hindsight it was awful, showing no caring at all towards the feelings of those people who were being criticised.

I remember working in a cafe around the year 2000 and customers sitting with their coffee looking at page three girls - I hated those 'newspapers'... We never had them in my house growing up. And those girls were so young.

I absolutely hated Little Britain - dreadful 'comedy' even at the time.

There were so many things even in the early 90s which would be shocking now. I remember my 15 year old friend snogging a guy in his 20s. Seems so weird now.

I also had a friend who met her partner when she was 15 and he was in his 40s and he used to collect her from school and was dating her mum first. Nowadays - it’s like - call the police he has obviously groomed her. Back then everyone just accepted it! It’s mad.

I was in secondary in the 80s we were allowed to take technical subjects i mean we were not allowed to wear trousers but could do woodwork!

I am ashamed to admit that I went to watch RB in stand-up at the time this incident happened, considering he apologised afterwards the whole show was about the incident and minimising it, making out it had all been blown out of proportion. JR seems to be an idiot (and not the only one) that went along with a master manipulator.

And then there's Jason Manford. Another sleezy individual who pops up on TV from time to time. I always turn over.

The point is the Jonathan Ross and Jane Goldman have an exceptional successful marriage for two people in show business.

I wonder how many famous men are feeling very very uncomfortable right now. There will be so many who have done similar to RB and so far have got away with it.

I think these people are allowed ( wrongly ) to walk among us , Greg wallace , David walliams , Jonathan woss, Jay blades

There seems to be very little accountability for those that enabled their behaviour or even for the perpetrators

The problem with that is that the more sober, small-c traditional attitudes to women weren’t wildly different (as dear Andrew Mountbatten and the rampant ongoing sexual abuse of female soldiers sadly illustrates).

Violence and sexual exploitation of women and girls doesn’t respect political tribal boundaries. You are blaming the left for lazily believing no one on their side would hurt women if they said they were feminist, but you are doing the same thing in reverse.

Put the self-satisfied tribal thinking away, and start looking critically at EVERYONE. Remember it’s physically easy for men to dominate women and children, no matter what they say they believe. They need to have actual, personal moral character to not take advantage of their strength.

I think the problem is ‘show business’ culture as much as anything else. In most workplaces people are restrained by a collective awareness that some things are not appropriate and can get you fired, but in film and television everything centres around the star, ‘the talent’, who seems to become untouchable. Places of worship can be equally unhealthy for this, mind.

Late 80s, office job, wasn't allowed to wear trousers.

I wasn’t. It was very dependent on what area you were in. The north west was shit for this, the midlands more open. The north west is still very dominated by sex-determined roles and thinking.

A lot of places and people are always very determined to keep thinking that they are ‘the new wave’ though. There are still news stories every so often about ‘the first woman to do this that or the other’ - on the one hand it may show improvement, on the other it shows the extent of barriers in place especially if you are not living in London and the Home Counties. There is always far too much emphasis on ‘don’t they know it’s 2026’ as if the year numbers make any difference whatsoever to culture - I can assure you that everyone thought themselves too modern and sophisticated to have a war in 1914 too! That’s an ongoing bugbear for me. Culture is so easily swayed as long as people are easily swayed, and unfortunately the more privileged people are the more easily they tend to be swayed by passing breezes.

I know a Radio 2 presenter. He wasn't there at this time though. He's said that he had an idea about certain presenters being weird at Radio 1 back in the day but nothing concrete, just a vibe. Nothing that could be reported.

I actually think the women working with Vernon Kay should call it out but they won't, one being quite ambitious.

IIRC correctly they did split up for a period but later reconciled.

Re Vernon Kay, once again IIRC it was strongly suggested by one of the online gossip websites at the time that Vernon took the hit for contacting the models as it wouldn't effect his career as much.

The BBC I think seem in awe of celebrity. To the point where they turn a blind eye. Where the culture of the place exists that nobody dare say ‘ are we sure’? Lest it is the end of their career. People who are not ‘on message’ are not listened to. And dumped. Dismissed from favour.
From Jimmy ‘ I do a lot for charity’ Saville, to Rolf Harris, and ‘aren’t I fun’ Jonathan Ross. Someone please change this culture at the BBC.

@Thundertoast
Joanna Lumley is eight years older than her husband. She met him as a school boy. He was at her son's school. Later she bumped into him again and they married. They are clearly very happy and I like Joanna. Do you damn Joanna for marrying someone she met when he was just a school boy and she was the Mum of a fellow student?

But the culture wasn’t different. That’s why it caused uproar and led to multiple people being sacked. If was part of the culture, then people would have found it funny. They didn’t, the public were rightly outraged.

Part of covering this stuff up, is pretending this was normal behaviour for the times. It wasn’t!

Wasn’t JR one of those who did the Charlotte Church countdown to 16?

Oh god all these comments are reminding me, at the beginning of sixth form (so the very oldest of us might have turned 17 the previous week) the maths teacher was in a relationship with one of the students which had apparently started in the summer, so when she was definitely 16. It was not a secret, when the sixth formers went to the pub at the weekends he was there with them all, nothing hidden. He was openly known to have had a relationship with a different sixth former a few years previously too. I wonder how she feels about that now?

Chris Moyles I think

Put the self-satisfied tribal thinking away, and start looking critically at EVERYONE.

Oh okay. I really needed to know that 😀. I’ll start with the culture around Blair’s times and neoliberalism though, thanks, because that was a turning point in socioeconomics and culture that we have never recovered from.

Womens rights do fluctuate. It is very frustrating that it is always women’s rights that fluctuate, since Roman times, and I think it is closely related with imperial thinking and ‘might is right’ attitudes. More women need to be on guard against this.

Rural area, mid-late 80s.
One boy took Home Economics because he wanted to be a chef & he was allowed.

He took so much stick for that though from the other boys in the year and I imagine we girls joined in too. Because that was what we did.