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Lucy Phillips

Lucy Phillips

31 Oct 2008 | 13:05

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Here’s a lesson on how not to hold on to your top talent: the BBC Ross/Brand fiasco.

After a week of bad headlines and public condemnation, both Russell Brand and Lesley Douglas, controller of Radio 2, have resigned and the future of Jonathan Ross looks doubtful as he serves out his three-month unpaid suspension.

While not to everyone’s taste, in my mind these are two of the best comedians around at the moment, and if the situation had been better managed or the correct procedures been there to prevent the broadcast going out in the first place, they would still be on the BBC’s airwaves. You only have to look at their viewing figures and the fact that they can command such high salaries to realise their worth.

But who can blame Brand for quitting? If my employer publicly shamed what I do and gave me no support whatsoever I’d be pretty annoyed too. This is definitely the BBC’s loss as I’m sure Brand will continue a flourishing career elsewhere.

For Ross things are a bit more complicated. His age and salary tie him to the Beeb a bit more, but having been warned by director general Mark Thompson that this is his last chance, I wouldn’t blame him if he also got fed up. I’m sure he’ll be looking to the other broadcasters as soon as his £18 million three-year contract is up. As for his current suspension – this feels like a schoolboy punishment at the expense of the BBC’s audience. I love Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and certainly won’t be watching Speed tonight (its replacement, and not even a halfway decent horror film for Halloween, have they really lost touch this much with what people want to watch?). To me, given that Sachs has accepted their apologies, this action was completely unnecessary. The BBC’s mantra of ‘creating content that the audience loves’ has totally gone to pot.

So where does the buck stop? With whoever allowed this piece of rubbish to go out on air. What on earth were they thinking? Comedians will naturally push the boundaries and in this case someone needed to intervene.

Lesley Douglas showed great integrity in her resignation and wish that junior staff should not be blamed. But she played no part in the decision to broadcast the phone calls and therefore should have stayed. Credited with turning around and modernising sleepy Radio 2, she is a huge loss of talent for the BBC and, ultimately, its audience.

In addition to investigating the details of what went wrong on the night, surely the BBC needs to ask some deeper questions about their communications strategy as the slow response, mixed messages and long silence after the event only served to compound the situation. For one of the world’s largest media organisations to fuel bad press in this way is particularly shameful.

Ironically the person most likely to benefit from this whole debacle is the least talented of all: Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter. I suspect the bookies are already taking bets on the likelihood of Georgina Baillie being on the next Celebrity Big Brother. And the worst part is that this will only go on to further erase people’s memories of Sachs’ wonderfully funny portrayal of Manuel on Fawlty Towers.


See also Tim Smedley's blog, 'BBC's self-flagellation must end'
 
 

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