Russell Brand, Jonathan Woss and Andrew Sachs

[JoolsToo]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/3263328/Russell-Brand-and-Jonathan-Ross-joke-radio -phone-calls-just-werent-funny.html

Have we not had a discussion about this? I'm surprised.

Seedy, sordid, unfunny little men pad obscene amounts of money to be obscene.

What's your view?

laugh... woops

I actually agree that this is only one small incident. What I think is relevant about it is that it is wholly representative of a couple of pretty nasty things that I mentioned in an earlier post; this bullying-for-entertainment trend , and this talking-about-women-who-have-sex-as-though-they're-scum thing. Which has always happened to an extent, but in my opinion, never more so than now, despite our alleged emancipation. Has anyone noticed where pornography is going lately? Okay, sorry. That's a whole other thing.

beanie, there's a difference between having a laugh at a celebrity who is being a bit foolish, or a laugh at someone falling over on You've Been Framed, and laughing at the abusive statements someone is making about someone.

Maybe I have been wrong(it has been known) is it okay to call up someone on mainstream radio and swear and make crude comments and then to ignore the fact that they are offended?

Re that Heather Mills comment, I also think that's pretty abhorrent, as is the way people talk about her. And I don't say that because I like her, I say that because she is a human being and shouldn't have that level of abuse hurled at her.

I'm pretty sure she said some nasty things about her ex, yes. But two wrongs don't make a right.

pmsl at ahundredtimes

Beanie, I can safely say that no MNer has ever called an elderly celebrity and left abusive messages like that about their grandchild. Or even tracked down the grandparents of a celebreity to leave abusive messages.

Agree with MoChan, and the posts about the prank phone calls.

To maintain the shock value these pillocks have had to keep pushing it further and further. Finally two of the biggest celebrities have gotten carried away and are now facing a backlash from the public who pay their salaries.

I was responding to wintera's post.

Disclaimer: don't listen to either of them on the radio. I am on the same sofa as DH when he watches JR on Friday night.

Either JR has been getting more pervy or I have been getting more Mary Whitehouse-ish. Either way I have found him less and less entertaining but not enough to complain about it. Perhaps lots of others have been feeling the same and this was the final straw that did make people complain. Perhaps people are so vociferous because there is so much pent-up anger.
IIRC, JR was blackmailing his guests on screen to handover items for Children in Need. How about JR and RB give a large part of their salaries to CIN by way of apology? (That's an apology to the whole nation BTW, not just the Sachs family.)

Can I put money on the fact that the poor woman will not sue for libel. I wonder if she will be in the papers soon.

OH and lest there be any confusion the stuff I was copying and pasting was not from the BBC 'have your say' pages. They were from the complaints log.

i like them both, find them both terribly amusing and clever, albeit not when brand is in 'winky' mode.i do think ross has been less and less amusing recently, though, perhaps it's some sort of mid-life crisis?

he had jay-z on recently (who wiped the floor with him incidentally) and seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time asking him about beyonce's bootaaaay etc which just sounded weird. y'know, you've got this very clever and amusing rap star on, he's got a very clever and talented girlfried... let's talk about her arse.

The granddaughter is a red herring - she is an adult who if she slept with Brand would have known that he is not exactly discreet and went ahead anyway.

If he is lying about it then yes I'd expect her to want to set the record straight.

But this is about their behaviour to Andrew Sachs w(hich will of course stop being newsworthy at some point but that of itself doesn't negate many of the comments on this thread)

You know what - along with comments about him being a grandfather I have read a lot of comments about her being a grand daughter. People seem to forget she's a 23 year old Grand daughter. When I was 23 I didn't expect of need my grandfather jumping in to protect me! I really can't wait to hear what she says in her interview with the News of the World.

i disagree, crumpet. she might have expected brand to be indiscreet but there is somethig particularly loathsome about two men sniggering about shagging a girl in any case, the fact that they named her and phoned her gf and did so on the radio is pretty crushing, imo, no matter how sexually free and easy you are. there should be a bit of respect, surely?

and if she takes full advantage of this publicity to help her career and profile... to my mind she bloody deserves something out of this fiasco. it won't mean that brand and ross have done her a favour by humiliating her and shaming her in front of her grandad. they'll still be pricks.

nobody's saying he's protecting her. what are you on about, beanie?

what if she comes out and says she doesn't know what all the fuss is about. GOD I hope she does

beanie you've made a valiant effort on this thread - but I have to point out that I am not offended by their behaviour, it wasn't my anserphone or my grand daughter.

I think they behaved stupidly and boringly and crassly. It's difficult to make a defense for crass and stupid behaviour really.

I don't know whether people are really using this to beat the BBC. That sounds more hysterical to me than the cry of 'I'm offended!' on the BBC message boards or wherever.

It just wasn't such a smart thing to do, and they look like idiots, and I think it's okay to judge them for being so.

what earthly difference will that make? you understand that it's ross and brand who have done the Bad Thing here, don't you? by leaving nasty answering machine messages for an old bloke and playing them on the radio..?

i'd imagine she will come out and say that she doesn't have a problem with it... why would she try to take down two v powerful men in her industry when she can choose to save their bacon and have them owe her a favour? you're seeming a bit naive, beanie, for all your bluster.

Beanie- why are you so against the granddaughter? she may or may not have been involved with RB that is not the point, she did not ask for him and JR to call up her grandfather and discuss it.

I don't disagree AitchTwoOh and certainly think it displays appallingly bad taste, but given the probability (sounds as if I've thought about this a lot but I haven't really!) that RB seems so publicity hungry and has from what I gather brought so many aspects of his life into the public domain, then I'm not entirely surprised that the name of someone he slept with has made its way into the media in a cringy, sniggering, made-fun-of way. It's not as if he didn't have form in this respect so if it did happen then she was taking a big risk.

But for me the most distateful thing is the Andrew Sachs element.

Erm... I fail to see where I have been 'against' the grandaughter! No - she didn't ask him to, well, not as far as we know.

She's not a child though and whether you like it or not the language used by the Mail on Sunday and Mail on Sunday when 'exposing' this is very deliberate.

I can only guess but I imagine what has happened is Sachs has been upset but his Grand daughter was pretty oblivious to the whole thing until it made the papers. In the BBC timeline there is no mention yet of when Sachs complained but from what I have read it was between the recording on 16th and the broadcast on the 18th. It just seems to me that this whole thing has been blown out of proportion and I wouldn't be surprised if Sachs is now regretting the fact that the Mail ran with this story to the extent it did.

Crumpet - when you say the Sachs element is the most distasteful thing, can you explain what you mean?

Apaprently there were 2 complaints about this before the Daily Mail jumped on the story. Now it's the lead news story on BBC London, to name but 1 I'm sure, people complaining left right and centre, major newspapers discussisng it, chat shows on radio, us etc etc etc. Bit mad really. Think people need to calm down a bit, in general, I mrean the whole of the UK.

The GF was supposed to be on the show. He didn't appear. They rang him. JR got silly and rude (what he';s paid to do and why people chose to tune in and listen to him) and said that RB had $*&%ed his GD on an answerphone messgae. Not nice but he'df have got over it a lot quicker if the the newspapers and radio shows weren't running this as a lead story!!!!

And what's the big deal with the UK finding out that RB and this girl slept together. (The issue of JR using the F word to hr GF aside). Those nasty mags like Heat etc print pics of people sneaking out of other peoples flats having obviously spent the night together. She got papped basically. Sleep with a celeb, take that risk. JR was wrong to have said what he said but that is a huge part of his appeal and why he is so highly paid and why he has huge audience figures etc so again, that's the risk that runs with having him on air.

Ohhhh bring out the fish and chips and let me eat wrap them up in this story please god!

But Georgina Baillie was not well known before this - neither am I, and if I was to sleep with Russell Brand I doubt anyone would be interested. Not even the tabloids. If she did sleep with him, and she may not have done, she had no reason to expect it to be discussed on national radio on three occasions, let alone have abusive phonecalls to her grandfather about it.