Comments on: Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand: Offensive can be funny.

By: Dan Wilson

Dan Wilson — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:27:17 +0000

Jamie: the 6th form common room suggestion is apposite.

Sue: the sheer number of complaints is pretty irrelevant right?

I’m all for clever comedy.. Peter Kay stands out for me as a great comedian, comic actor who does some great stuff without being a shit.

I also think Andrew Sachs comes out of this all as a decent, humourous man.

By: Sue

Sue — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:42:43 +0000

BTW, Newsnight has just said 27,000 complaints, so that must be 9,000 in the last 24 hours or so.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:45:35 +0000

It all felt a little like wandering into the 6th Form Common Room. Rather infantile and hugely unfunny. How many of the gags will anyone ever recite in the future?

Everyone knows that Bart Simpson does the best prank calls…

By: Sue

Sue — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:14:14 +0000

I rather like what Stephen Fry said: I hate rudeness and unkindness but how can one be on the same side as the Daily Mail?

And frankly I’d have a little more sympathy for Ms. Baillie (no relation) if she wasn’t being spoken for by Max Clifford.

By: Brigadier

Brigadier — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:19:46 +0000

For me the only similarity with BrassEye worth noting is that the number of complaints seems to have risen dramatically since the ‘story’ broke. The Russell Brand programme drew only 2 complaints when broadcast; now the number stands somewhere around the 18,000 mark.

For right or for wrong the media have been publicising this episode to such an extent that it’s now hard to think of it as anything other than a jolly for the journos as yet another opportunity to lay in to the BBC presents itself. The bigger the stink they manage to cause the more they can hold their noses and complain about the smell. That Andrew Sachs himself has been entirely gracious about the unwanted attention this furore has brought him must be a source of enormous frustration to them.

You know my opinions about offensive humour, and I quite agree with you about the most important point: it wasn’t funny.

(NB The Brand’s podcast is currently No.1 in the iTunes chart thanks, I imagine, in no small measure to this incident. I can’t work out if this is a bit of a Frank Bough moment or not.)