While I admire Charles Moore’s willingness to inherit the mantle of Mary Whitehouse, I don’t think he has quite put his finger on the essence of the Brand-Ross business. The large public outcry provoked by the call to Andrew Sachs can’t be channelled into a general war on smut at the BBC. I don’t think there’s a public appetite to see Ross as the personification of BBC smut, who must never be re-employed by the corporation. Though Ross was involved in the incident, it wasn’t really about him. And it isn’t quite right to see it as an acute example of a general smut problem.
It was really about Russell Brand. Russell Brand is a very unusual comedian. He makes his own life central to his act. He is the Tracey Emin of comedy. And of course it’s his sex life that provides the material. Of course lots of other comics make sex jokes, but no one makes his own sex life into the main plot like this. His appeal is that he is very keen to talk about his prolific sex life, and to display his pride in it. In other words he is the incarnation of sexual hedonism, of sex as recreation.
There is a difference between the comedian who makes smutty jokes here and there (which is most of them of course) and a personality whose act is entirely based in the message that sex is flippant fun.
Jonathan Ross is in the former camp: he is a family man with a lucrative juvenile streak.
Last month Brand made some headlines when he presented the MTV music awards. As well as calling George W Bush a ‘retard’, he offended many viewers by mocking a boy-band called the Jonas Brothers for wearing ‘purity’ rings, signalling their intention to avoid sex before marriage. He joked that he had relieved one of the band of his virginity backstage, holding the silver ring aloft. When challenged he half-apologised for the joke, but added, ‘a little sex once in a while never hurt anybody.’
In the same way he half-apologised for the Sachs stunt soon after its broadcast, and then added, ‘but it was quite funny.’ Both non-apologies reveal the heart of the man: he is committed to the belief that the celebration of promiscuity is morally harmless, that only other, squarer people have qualms about this. His whole persona is based in the very strong belief – a sort of faith position – that sex is harmless fun, and it’s moralists who do the moral damage.
It is acceptable for comedians to make flippant sex jokes as long as there is ambiguity about whether they mean them, as long as it seems like an act, a momentary escape from reality. In Ross’ case, the crude jokes are balanced by the fact that he is a family man. By contrast, Brand’s sex jokes can’t be separated from boasts about his actual life. This makes it a different ball-game.
The BBC should never have given him a platform. It should have understood that he is not a normal smut-prone comic but a sort of cultic figure, a lord of misrule, an inverted preacher. His voice should not have been given authority by the BBC.
It is therefore right that he has gone, and that Lesley Douglas, the woman who put him on Radio 2, has gone as well. The BBC could draw a line under the whole business if it admitted that it made a serious lapse of judgement in hiring Brand. Instead it apologises for a one-off editorial error, and talks of the necessity of edgy material – which gives it the appearance of evading the gravity of the issue.
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