I REMEMBER seeing a painting of an ancient duel that showed the loser lying flat on his back with his life’s blood soaking into his shirt, while the victor looked on with a smoking pistol in his hand. Underneath the painting was the line “For he had spoken lightly of a lady’s name.” If I could get my hands on a couple of prints of this artistic work, I would have them framed and send one each to Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. It might serve to remind them that the great British public will not countenance the wanton sullying of a young lady’s reputation, even if the lady in question heads up a female dance troupe that goes by the name of Satanic Sluts, a peculiar little act that includes striptease.
The young lady in question is 23-year-old Georgina Baillie, granddaughter of Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs. She is also, by her own admission, a former lover of the spindle-shanked Brand.
His crime was to join with his pal Jonathan in leaving a particularly obscene message on Andrew Sachs’s answer phone that included the claim that he had done the bold thing with the fragrant Georgina. The two infantile presenters didn’t have the wit to realise that this claim might not go down too well with the ageing thespian, or maybe they just didn’t care as long as they got a lot of cheap laughs from the sort of folk who listen to Brand’s inimitable brand of smut and innuendo.
To his credit, the mascara-wearing muppet had the decency to resign from the Radio 2 programme he fronted. He also tried to shoulder all the blame in an attempt to deflect the public’s slings and arrows from his good buddy.
Ross has been suspended without pay from all broadcasting on the Beeb for 12 weeks. He didn’t seem as keen as his pal to resign. One can hardly blame him. At least Russell Brand has several strings to his bow, although it’s clear from the programme in question that singing isn’t one of them. He is a successful stand-up comedian and has proved himself to be a competent actor. Ross’s talents, on the other hand, seem to be rather more limited. Indeed, when his name came up in conversation with my local newsagent he told me he has to leave the room at the first sight of those “four poofs and a piano” that serve as the target for Ross’s seedy single entendres.
I could never quite understand why the Beeb considered it necessary to pay someone £6million a year to talk dirty to a bunch of celebrities. Since most of those same celebrities were just using the programme to promote their latest movie or book, they would have turned up regardless of who was hosting the show.
With the current financial state of British television it is extremely doubtful that the chat-show host would be able to command anything like that amount of money from ITV or Channel 4. He might have had to get by on a mere million or so a year, poor soul, if the Beeb’s bosses had shown him the door.
Meanwhile, Georgina and her Satanic Sluts are well on their way to stardom. She has already picked up a nice little bundle for selling her story to the red top tabloid that rejected her when she applied to be one of its Page Three girls. And it won’t be long before she and the three other “sluts” turn up in Big Brother, I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here or some such quality TV show.
It’s perhaps ironic that Fawlty Towers should be linked, however tenuously, with this tasteless episode. The John Cleese-led show was one of the finest comedy series ever produced by the BBC, but it was made before the advent of the current wave of dross that infects the world of radio and television. And while the BBC continues to throw millions of pounds at the likes of Jonathan Ross, it is unlikely that it will ever have the funds necessary to make another programme of the calibre of Fawlty Towers or Dad’s Army.
Whatever the effect the whole sorry mess has on Jonathan Ross’s bank balance, it would be a pity if the moral pendulum swung back too far in the other direction. Some of the older readers among you will perhaps recall Wilfred Pickles. He was a massive BBC radio star back in the pre-TV days, but one very mild example of double entendre threatened his broadcasting career.
He had a radio quiz show called Have a Go in which listeners phoned in to answer questions for a cash prize. If they got the answer right, Wilfred would say to his producer: “Give him the money, Barney.”
One day, Wilfred asked a lady contestant what a bride might say to her husband on their wedding night.
“Ooh, Wilfred,” she replied. “That’s a hard one.”
As quick as a flash, Pickles said: “Give her the money, Barney.”
The BBC was none too pleased. Changed times, or what?
Finally, it gave me great pleasure to read that Beeb football pundit Chick Young was clattered during a charity football match against a team of MSPs.
Around 10 years ago, I participated in a similar event that saw the actors from High Road face Young’s team of former players and a smattering of celebrities.
Most of the people taking part regarded the whole thing as a bit of a giggle, but wee Chick was out to prove that the world of soccer had lost out when he took up journalism.
At one point in the game, when I tackled him, he stamped down as hard as he could on my foot. It brought tears to my eyes, I can tell you. When I took my boot off after the game, it was full of blood. I lost my big toenail as a result.
When he was told what he had done some time later, he laughed. He wasn’t laughing when that politician upended him.
What goes around, comes around.