My diversity targets for the BBC

Terrible news for gay broadcasters —  the BBC has only one year to meet a diversity target which says that 8 per cent of roles on TV and radio must be occupied by homosexuals. This means a reduction in gay TV weathermen by at least three quarters, and they’ll also have to sack a good half of the gay chat-show hosts.

This seems to me unfair, but that’s diversity targets for you. The 8 per cent figure has been appropriated by the BBC from the gay lobby, although there are activists who will tell you that a still greater proportion of our country is homosexual. This does not match with my inquiries, however. As most people know, there are only a few hundred male homosexuals in the country, and they all work for the BBC already. There are also 22 lesbians in the UK, all living in Hebden Bridge, happily going about their lives and not bothering anybody. I suppose these poor women are now going to be dragooned by the BBC into becoming newsreaders or extras in EastEnders, so that Clare Balding is not forced to fill the entire 4 per cent quota by herself.

The BBC is also insistent that 8 per cent of people on TV must be disabled, this being the figure which is representative of them within the UK population — although once again I remember reading in one of the in-house journals of some dis-ability lobby organisation that one in three people in the country is actually crocked. I do worry that stressed and anxious BBC producers may try to cut corners in fulfilling their targets here by the easier method of appointing able-bodied people to roles and then maiming them, perhaps with a baseball bat or cudgel of some kind. Luckily for the BBC staff, I believe that these days being as thick as pigshit also qualifies as a disability, so that’s the quota on Match of the Day and Newsnight filled immediately.

Meanwhile, I have written to Lord Hall, the director-general of the BBC, to demand that the corporation introduces targets to ensure that Britain’s Islamophobic community is adequately represented on air.