Has everyone forgotten Jonathan Ross and Sachsgate?

[Greedybilly]

I love traitors but i detest Jonathon Ross. I clearly remember his vile phone calls to Andrew Sachs about his grandaughter. Along with his accomplice Russel Brand - vile, laddish behaviour. How is he even still working? Does he have mates in high places - people's careers have gone under for much less.
Also he makes my skin crawl and is ruining a damn good show.

Totally agree with you. I still remember his misogynistic interviews with Amy Winehouse and Gwyneth Paltrow. He’s disgusting and I hope he’s kicked off celebrity traitors next episode.

The problems with Jonathan Ross is that he set himself up as an arbiter of what was funny or not and acceptable/ok or not.

He was happy to be risqué or offensive with no concern for who it hurt. Until it bit him on the arse.

He thrived off being on the edge of other people’s funny jokes. He didn’t say the mean thing but he didn’t step in and stop it, he joined in.

He doesn’t like his kids being commented on but he was opinionated as fuck on other people.

i am just annoyed that he’s not been phased out on tv or radio.

Are there any unproblematic talk show hosts? Not Ellen Degeneres that's for sure. And Parky had his moments-the Meg Ryan interview was at least 50% his fault!

I always remember Jonathan going round each member of Take That and kissing them on the lips...no one bats an eyelid at that though.

In fairness he took a massive financial hit for it, but it wasn't his show and the responsibility for it ultimately lay with Brand and his producers. I expect if it was his show, he'd have been forced to resign like Brand was, but you can't expect the BBC to axe one of its most popular stars over some poor taste prank phone calls that he didn't broadcast.

Worth pointing out as well, there was no controversy when it was broadcast. It was only when the Daily Mail published an article about it (I believe) weeks later that it became a widely reported story and OFCOM started receiving complaints - presumably from people who mostly hadn't heard it. If the DM hadn't blown it up, it'd likely have gone completely under the radar and not be remembered as some massive controversy.

If it happened today he'd be finished, obviously. But it's not like he's carried on doing similar stuff for the past 20 years so I don't see the point in holding it against him. There has to be scope for forgiveness and moving on from what was essentially a poor-taste joke aired on the wrong platform.

I always think it serves as a reminder to people pleasers/fawners etc (and I include me in that if I don't watch myself) where they are doing it because they are terrified of not being liked and think by running themselves into the ground that they will be liked that things like this are proof that you don't have to be nice/treat people well to be liked.

I've repeated the word liked too many times but my point stands. Push back people pleasers, say no, don't keep sacrificing yourself. Be more like an entitles man (I was trying to think of a woman in tv, but I can only think of JR, jeremy clarkson hitting that bloke, boy george and the radiator and Gino for various things, original one being a burglar), oh and loads of men I have worked with. It makes the concept of cancel culture slightly redundant as it's not in action here.

Jonathon Ross is a vile individual. I can’t believe people like him.
The Andrew Sachs thing was awful and just showed JR’s true colours.

The British public are very strange in the things they are happy to forget about.

I’ve been thinking about my posts from last night and people are quite right that I was over the top in my comments. I don’t know why I was so invested to be honest. This has given me a lot to think about in terms of my own behaviour when protected by anonymity on the Internet. Easy for me to sit in my front room and judge. Of course people deserve a second chance, I’ve been given them and thankfully so.

And yet in this wiki article (which is all I know about the 2008 incident), she also says:

Baillie also revealed that Brand had apologised to her over ten years after the event, and paid for her rehab: "I was struggling with addiction for about 10–15 years and I was finding it very hard to get clean and sober. So one of my mutual friends between me and Russell called him up and said, ‘Georgie needs some help’, and so he sent me to rehab. And so I was physically separated from my drug of choice and I got some therapy and I think that had a big part to play in my recovery journey. He looked me in the eyes and he made his amends to me … he acknowledged it was a private relationship and it shouldn’t have been made public. At the time he had two daughters and it really made him grow and change and I felt it was genuine and I felt he was sorry."

The Russell Brand Show prank calls - Wikipedia

It wasn’t that it was aired on the wrong platform that made it so vile for me.

It was that it was left on an old couple’s answerphone. How cruel.

As a non English person can I ask does he have a speech impediment or does he talk like that purposely as it is upper upper class? I honestly have no idea. ( as in replace most of his r's with w's).

Well I said ‘nearly 30’ for the slight difference a misquote means but yes I think I was applying his age at marriage.

I am surprised at the defenders of this as I still think it’s grim that a 25 year old dated a 16 year old. I rather think if an OP posted that a man of 25 was dating their 16 year old most would be very uncomfortable at the dynamic. His quote is uncomfortable:

‘The couple met when Jane was working as a showbiz journalist, with Jonathan previously discussing their age gap.
"When we first got together, she was very young… I wasn't that old but I was considerably older and she came straight from home with her parents," he said during an appearance on Loose Women.
"And I think the relationship carried on, I was sort of a parent figure as well as a husband."

His interviews were often misogynistic and the Andrew Sachs’s thing horrid. I read about the impact on the woman and her wider family later and really felt for her. Typical of those sorts of men and that he turns out to be protective of his own daughters is just the final irony.

@marigoldsareblooming i think he does have a bit of a speech impediment but the ‘r’ to ‘w’ switch is also a southerner/cockney trait that wouldn’t be found in a ‘posh’ accent.

You don't have to like him to watch him, and judging by his ability to form quick alliances on CT's I guarantee that he has plenty of dirt on people in the media stacked away. He is a big fan of the show and I bet he helped get the CTs going.

This is the perfect show for him... its like squid games. I hope Alan Carr screws him over at the end.

The nasty, hectoring message he left for Andrew Sachs shows exactly who he is. The incident may have happened years ago, it doesn’t change the repulsive things he said about a young woman.

I remember Sharon Osborne complained in an interview about the cruel comments he made regarding her daughters’ appearance and how surprised she was seeing as his daughters were around the same age.

The fact that he was such close friends with RB is also very telling.

The Traitors is showing his true colours - he really doesn’t like anyone challenging his authority. You could see it in the way he spoke to Clare and Ruth.

He made an error of judgment by going on the show.

The nasty, hectoring message he left for Andrew Sachs shows exactly who he is.

What did he say, exactly? All I can find referenced is he blurted out "he fucked your granddaughter".

Sachs was a refugee from Nazi Germany. I think it’s horrible that he should have been victimised in this way in old age. He must have thought standards in this country had fallen dramatically, and they certainly had.

i don’t know how anyone can defend Ross and Brand. If you do so you are condoning the slippery slope which leads to Saville and Harris. Of course an over- permissive ‘anything goes’ attitude is dangerous to us all. The BBC gave the green light to some very powerful (male) stars and they should take responsibility for the damage done.

Ross and Brand are oiks, but the BBC facilitated them.

I will say this: JR is intelligent and well-educated (though you could be forgiven for not realising he has a degree from UCL). Which makes it even worse in my view.

He knows better; he just also knows he can get away with stuff.

Is that not bad enough?

It doesn't strike me as a "nasty, hectoring" message, no. Juvenile and inappropriate, but not nasty or hectoring. I am still assuming there must be more, as people seem so sure of that.

I am one of the few people that heard this incident live on the radio, I can’t remember the exact words used, it was two grown men screeching with laughter as they left a answering machine message for an elderly man who had either cancelled his appearance or failed to show up to the radio show (can’t remember the reason they were phoning Andrew Sachs).

Brand was going on and on with Ross calling out in the background and Brand squealing with laughter. I turned the radio off, as it sounded like bullying and humiliation to me which I can’t abide in any shape or form.

I do not remember what was said, just how it made me feel.

I agree with @FuzzyWolf, what a depressing world if we are held to account for something like that forever, meaning we are seen differently and not given any forgiveness. Who wants to live that life? Is it not possible that humans are capable of good and bad behaviour in a lifetime??

And that is modern life in a nutshell - I don't remember what actually happened, I can't report anything objectively and factually, but I can tell you how it made me feel and that should be cause for condemnation enough. Oh for some rigour!

The full transcript is widely available online for people to judge for themselves. It’s not my responsibility to post it here.

I listened to the incident at the time it was broadcast and I felt very uncomfortable. It made me see Ross differently.

That is good enough.

Let’s not help men keep that bar so fucking low. We all make mistakes but I think most of us have never publicly shamed a sexual partner we while embarrassing and insulting their grandparents. It’s not a simple joke that went too far. It wasn’t a private conversation that escaped a WhatsApp or similar. The contempt the incident showed for a woman that Brand had had sex with (but obviously didn’t want to again so who didn’t matter) and the exploitation of someone’s grandparents was gross. There is no problem remembering such incidents and judging them - and there is no worry about it representing cancel culture when he was not cancelled and is not likely to be in a world where men get a more generous judgement than women when it comes to standards of acceptable behaviour.

I have never voluntarily watched or listed to Jonathan Ross since that incident. Appalling behaviour. Russell Brand? Likewise.