Toksvig Is the REAL 'N in Cut' Along With BBC

[Teddy Bear]

At the best of times I can't stand Sandi Toksvig and what she considers to be humour. I remember when she used to appear on LBC (London's Talk Radio) as a presenter in the afternoon. She would usually have some sycophantic guests with her to affirm her extreme left wing point of view and laugh at her 'jokes', until eventually I had to turn the radio off and avoid listening at that time. I was very glad when LBC got rid of her, but not surprisingly she found a home with the BBC.

You can gauge the measure of her 'humour' in this following story, which also highlights the left wing bias of the BBC as well as their (lack of) 'commitment' to follow the guidelines in taste and decency imposed on any broadcaster.

Not for a moment could one imagine that if the 'joke' referred to here was being applied to the Labour party would the BBC producer have approved it.

BBC executives rule most offensive word in English language is 'a good joke' on the radio at 6.30pm

The BBC was at the centre of a new decency row last night after ruling that the most offensive word in English is acceptable for broadcast.

The Corporation decided that the word – most abhorrent to women – has lost much of its 'shock value' and is tolerable for radio and television.

An executive who cleared it for daytime transmission on flagship Radio 4 even said it would 'delight' many of its audience, who would 'love it’.

The BBC’s ruling is outlined in the rejection of a complaint from a member of the public, who took offence to a reference to the word on The News Quiz.

The scripted reference, in a joke by presenter Sandi Toksvig, was approved before the programme was broadcast first at 6.30pm and then as a repeat the following day at 12.30pm.

But the BBC’s rejection of the complaint has infuriated MPs and campaigners, who say the use of the phrase carries connotations of sexual abuse.

John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport select committee, said: 'The vast majority of people still regard this an offensive term and it should not have been broadcast at this time.'

The row centres on an edition of The News Quiz, which features two teams of comedians answering topical questions.

Danish-born comedian Miss Toksvig, a mother of three, made reference to the word in an item about cuts to child benefit.

The Mail on Sunday feels it is necessary to the reporting of the story to repeat the joke, and apologises in advance for any offence caused.

Miss Toksvig said: 'It's the Tories who have put the 'n' into cuts.'

The programme, broadcast in October last year, was pre-recorded and the remark was cleared by Paul Mayhew Archer, then Commissioning Editor of Radio 4 comedy.

But listener Colin Harrow, a retired newspaper executive, believed the reference was unacceptable and complained to the BBC and the BBC Trust.

Both bodies rejected his complaint – with their reasons for doing so last night at the centre of the fresh row.

In a letter dated 30 December 2010, Colin Tregear, the BBC's Director of Complaints informed Mr Harrow that his complaint was being rejected following consultation with Mr Mayhew Archer.

Mr Tregear then reproduces Mr Mayhew Archer's defence of the joke. The executive, who now works for the Corporation on a freelance basis, acknowledged that he knew the joke would cause offence but argued this was not a reason to censor it.

He wrote: 'I want you to know that I thought very hard about whether to allow Sandi's joke to be broadcast.

'I knew it might offend some listeners, and if my job was simply not to risk offending any listeners I could have cut it instantly. But that is not my job.

'My job here was to balance the offence it might cause some listeners against the delight it might give other listeners.

'I say delight because I thought it was a good joke and I knew that a huge number of fans of the programme would love it.'

Mr Mayhew Archer, 58, went on to argue that the phrase had lost much of its ability to offend.

He wrote: 'I was also aware that as a society our tolerance of "strong" language keeps shifting.

'Ten years ago the single use of the word in a film would automatically earn it an 18 certificate. This is no longer the case.

BBC'S SEX ACT TALK AT 7.30AM
Comedian: Gina Yashere made the lewd comments on a programme replayed at 7.30am

A guest on a BBC radio show left listeners disgusted after talking about an intimate sex act in crude terms just after 7.30am yesterday.

Listeners to Radio 4 Extra were shocked to hear comedian Gina Yashere discuss how American black female comedians talk about 'sucking a *****' on stage.

She was being interviewed on What's So Funny?, a show presented by Rufus Hound, which was broadcast immediately after The Chrysalids, a drama aimed at younger listeners. What's So Funny? was repeated at 5.30pm.

'For good or ill, the word does not seem to have quite the shock value it did. I am not saying this is a good thing. I am simply saying that I think attitudes shift.'

Mr Mayhew Archer added that because 53-year-old Miss Toksvig was a 'much-loved' and 'much-admired' broadcaster she could say things others might not get away with.

In rejecting the complaint, Mr Tregear said there was a significant difference between the specific use of a term and an indirect reference.

He said Miss Toksvig was 'using a degree of wit' and the phrase was not 'significantly out of keeping with the overall tone of the programme’.

Mr Harrow then took his complaint to the BBC Trust, which decided not to take it up.

The failure of the BBC to act comes despite guidelines which, while not banning any words or phrases, lists this word among terms considered to be particularly strong and potentially offensive.

Such words must only be used when editorially justified and must be cleared by a senior manager.

In a letter dated 20 January, 2011, Francesca O'Brien, head of Editorial Standards at the BBC Trust Unit, said: 'The BBC guidelines include this word as one of the most offensive so I accept your comments regarding the potential offensiveness of the word.

'However given the nature of the programme, service and time and the expectations of the likely audience, the fact that the word was not actually spoken but only referred to in word-play and with reference to the context of cuts which had been announced that week, I do not consider that there is a reasonable prospect of success for your appeal on the point.'

A subsequent appeal to the Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee was also rejected.

A disappointed Mr Harrow said last night: 'I am not a retired vicar for Cheltenham and I am certainly not a prude. I spent most of my working life in newsrooms and I have heard my fair share of bad language.

'But I do not expect to hear an unmistakable reference to this word in a BBC programme.

'Of course they used a veil, but it was a pretty thin veil. They might as well have just said it.

'You would have to be illiterate not to have understood what she was getting at.

'What really surprised me was that programme was scripted and approved in advance.'

Vivienne Pattison, of viewers campaign group Mediawatch-UK, said radio programmes, currently free of any controls, should now be given their own watershed.

She said: 'This is still an offensive term and is in fact one of the only truly offensive terms we have left. It should not have been broadcast at this time.'

The BBC said last night: 'Context and tone are key to determining whether strong language is editorially justified.

'The BBC has rigorous guidelines. The News Quiz is a long-running panel show aimed at an adult audience. Listeners are used to a certain level of robust humour.'

Ofcom said its own research confirmed the word was still regarded as highly offensive, adding that it would investigate any complaint made to it.

[Teddy Bear]

Peter Hitchens shares his view on the subject - not for the first time we seem to be in absolute agreement.

BBC’s only taboo c-word is ‘conservative’

Every few weeks a reader writes to me to tell me that the BBC has brushed aside a reasonable complaint.

They send me the fat-bottomed, complacent responses, and they share with me their frustration that, in the end, the BBC is accountable to nobody.

But Colin Harrow’s story was exceptional. Colin likes the BBC, and sees the point of it.

Like millions, he feels betrayed by the way in which the Corporation has become an active and highly committed campaigner for a social, sexual and cultural revolution that they don’t support.

It is as if a valued old friend had suddenly taken up snorting cocaine in late middle age.

But Colin really didn’t see why The News Quiz, which goes out on Radio 4 at a time when children might easily be listening, should get away with transmitting Sandi Toksvig’s crude joke, which coyly smuggled the c-word on to the air while casually insulting an entire political party (one that
I don’t support), and, crucially, had been pre-approved by a senior executive.

The BBC has played a big part in normalising the f-word and so making our society a lot coarser than it was.

It is plainly itching to do the same with the c-word, as its smug, unhelpful responses to Colin Harrow show.

The details of this event – and of Mr Harrow’s patient efforts to do something about it – are in today’s Mail on Sunday, and I urge you to read them for an insight into the proud, sealed minds of those who are in control of public broadcasting in this country.

The News Quiz itself has for years been a great red boil on
the BBC’s bland face, utterly biased in favour of the Left in all matters, and neither ashamed nor restrained.

No executive ever does anything about this constant, repeated breach of the Corporation’s own charter.

And when listeners try, they receive crass, unresponsive statements such as the one offered to Colin Harrow: ‘The innuendo was within audience expectations for an adult comedy programme.’

This is simply untrue, as it obviously wasn’t within the audience expectations of Mr Harrow and, it is reasonable to assume, not within the expectations of quite a lot of other reasonable Radio 4 listeners. But he’s only a powerless licence-payer.

Does anyone believe for a moment that an innuendo of this kind, directed against Nelson Mandela or any person or body beloved by the BBC, would have been approved for transmission?

The licence fee cannot survive if the BBC continues to treat conservative men and women in this contemptuous manner.

[Teddy Bear]

Another comment on this incident, this time form Cristina Odone in the Telegraph, and speaks of the mindset prevalent at the BBC.

Only the BBC would think the C-word is humorous
By Cristina Odone Society Last updated: June 6th, 2011

I have never met Paul Mayhew-Archer, but I have attended lots of dinner parties with BBC executives like him. I don’t mind the anti-royal sneers that come out with the first glass of pinot grigio, the dogmatic secularism, or the tireless Tory-bashing that is the main course. I don’t even mind the hypocrisy that allows the host to champion his children’s state-school education while their private tutor sneaks upstairs.

What does make me cringe, though, is the barrage of four-letter words traded across the table. Casual blasphemy, the F-word, the C-word: nothing is beyond the pale at these gatherings. These men and women are stuck in the days of self-conscious student journalism, when a cover featuring the vice-chancellor on the lavatory was seen as daringly subversive. In their eyes, being prudish about words or mores smacks of conservatism – a truly dirty word in the BBC lexicon.

I wasn’t surprised, therefore, to learn that Mr Mayhew-Archer, then commissioning editor for Radio 4 comedy, had cleared for use a joke involving a word that in my youth was referred to only obliquely as “see you next Tuesday”. I wasn’t shocked when he said most listeners to The News Quiz would “delight” in it. And I didn’t raise an eyebrow when I heard the context: a foul-mouthed swipe at the Conservative Party. In Mr Mayhew-Archer’s world, this kind of thing happens all the time.

Most of us don’t live there, thank goodness. If a friend used part of the female anatomy as shorthand for something (or someone) contemptible, we’d both be embarrassed by the gross slip, and quickly change the subject. The last time I heard a stranger use the term, he had the good grace to blush: that, rather than four-letter words on The News Quiz, is a mark of civilisation.

BBC producers complain about being forced to move up North, as part of the corporation’s mad exercise in regional equality; the truth is that the corporation already inhabits a different planet, not a different region, from most of its audience.

[Teddy Bear]

Another scathing article on the subject highlights how the arrogant mindset prevalent at the BBC has lost the plot completely, along with the 'toothless' Ofcom .

Prime-time smut, vile obscenities on Radio 4 and a smug elite who sneer at the silent majority

By Bel Mooney

When the BBC executives talk about Sandi Toksvig, they like to use phrases like ‘much-loved’ and ‘much-admired’.

The trouble is that when presenters like her become well-established and popular at the Corporation, they think they can get away with anything — as long as they can use ‘wit’ as an excuse.

Presumably that was the rationale behind the BBC describing a particularly crass ‘joke’ she used on Radio 4 as ‘a delight’.

No doubt some people will have found her controversial scripted comment on the increasingly tedious programme The News Quiz funny rather than offensive.

Certainly, her typically Left-leaning quip (and the programme is built on them) got an easy laugh.

I’m afraid I have to repeat it to make the point, so here it comes: ‘It’s the Tories who have put the “n” into cuts.’ Not especially witty, I agree. But it’s what happened afterwards that I find truly offensive.

When a listener complained about this reference to what was once an unacceptable four-letter word, the BBC’s response was so feeble and complacent it might have been issued by the broadcasting regulator Ofcom.

To me, there’s a direct link between this row over Toksvig’s gag and the news that TV chiefs are to be ordered to crack down on what is aired on our TV screens before the 9pm watershed.

A report to be published today, commissioned by the Prime Minister, will make Ofcom confront the conveyor belt of smut on our screens. At long last.

Don’t forget, it was Ofcom that disregarded public outrage over the sleazy dance routines performed by the stars Rihanna and Christina Aguilera on The X Factor last year, and ignored 4,500 complaints.

It was Ofcom that outrageously tried to shift blame to this newspaper after it published images from the TV programme to highlight the fact it was anything but family viewing. It is Ofcom that, so often, lets decent, ordinary viewers down.

Do you think the producers of The X Factor or the bosses at ITV feel any shame for what was broadcast to the young children who watch the show with their parents early on a Saturday evening? I doubt it.

But then the images we witnessed on that show — just like Sandi Toksvig’s cheap and degrading joke on the radio — reveal much about the attitudes of those with power in the world of broadcasting.

You can bet they chime perfectly with the unelected members of Ofcom, who boast six-figure salaries and an anything goes attitude to standards.

The issue here is about how we judge what is acceptable. It raises the question of whether the broadcasters ever stop to consider the long-term consequences of the pervasive coarsening of image, word and thought we have witnessed over the past ten years.

When Colin Harrow, a retired newspaperman, complained about that News Quiz joke, his objection was rejected by the BBC and the BBC Trust.

The reasons given are revealing. The (then) commissioning editor Paul Mayhew-Archer acknowledged that he knew the joke might cause offence, but still thought that no reason to cut it.

Referring to the once taboo c-word, he said: ‘I was also aware that as a society our tolerance of “strong” language keeps shifting. Ten years ago, the single use of the word in a film would automatically earn it an X certificate. This is no longer the case. For good or ill, the word does not seem to have quite the shock value it did.’

Doesn’t it? If someone called you that word wouldn’t you take offence? If a yobbo shouted it at your wife or girlfriend, wouldn’t you be outraged?

People have been using expletives in private for years. But such words become acceptable only because educated people such as Mr Archer decide it’s OK for them to be used in public.

What’s more, the context is all important. What a yobbish football crowd yells at Wayne Rooney cannot be compared with something that is broadcast to a nationwide audience in the middle of the evening.

It is simply not true to declare that the expletive has lost its shock value. It is a term of abuse. And — witty or not — Sandi was deliberately invoking it to abuse the Conservative Party, in that leery, sniggering, News Quiz style.

Of course, a presenter will try to get away with a ‘joke’ they are proud of. The responsibility lies with those with the power of veto who should have the courage to say: ‘Sorry, old girl, that’s too near the knuckle.’

A broadcaster making a slip of the tongue (as Jim Naughtie memorably did on the Today programme when referring to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt) is one thing, but to choose to allow the taboo to be broken (even if obliquely) in a pre-recorded programme, and then defend the decision by saying that times have changed . . . it’s disingenuous, devious and dishonest.

If, as a society, we have become more tolerant of foul language, sick jokes, tawdry TV images, uncontrolled behaviour and pervasive sexualisation of young children, that is largely because broadcasters and film-makers and others in our creative industries have been pushing back the boundaries for years.

A shift happens only because of a collective push. It’s as if the callow men and women in positions of responsibility within broadcasting are so desperate to appear cool and right on they don’t dare to say ‘No’.

Ofcom has said that its own research shows that the c-word is still highly offensive and that it would investigate any complaint made to it. I’d be happy about that if I thought the promise had any meaning. But given their track record, can we believe it?

It seems to me that the kind of people who serve on this quango have so much in common with those who run our broadcasting institutions that the two are virtually interchangeable. This is a self-satisfied liberal elite that regards any sort of censorship as the ultimate evil.

There has always been a gulf between what is acceptable to the chattering classes and what is experienced by what used to be called The Silent Majority.

I once had a fierce argument with a good friend who had enjoyed a privileged upbringing, private education, brilliant university career and richly rewarded professional life, who told me I made too much fuss about what was suitable to be seen on TV, even by children.

He genuinely believed pornography was fun, and that there was no proven connection between grotesque violence on screen and real-life crime. And so on.

Over the years I’ve met so many like him — knee-jerk liberals with no knowledge of the real-life consequences of such slackness of thought.

They sneer at those of us who worry that the refusal at the top of society to set any limits filters right down to those who are the most impressionable and most likely to be corrupted by crude images and words. They accuse us of that most embarrassingly uncool sin: moral panic.
The performances of singers such as Rihanna have a direct influence on the little girls who watch them

The performances of singers such as Rihanna have a direct influence on the little girls who watch them

As if it’s prudish to point out that when little girls watch famous singers dress and dance like hookers —as I witnessed for myself at a Rihanna concert — it has a direct influence on the way they value themselves.

As if it’s reactionary to suggest that when respected broadcasters see nothing wrong in tacitly approving the crudest of expletives, another chunk falls out of the wall of decency.

That’s why I hope today’s report — presented by Reg Bailey, the chief executive of the Mothers’ Union — is really tough on the broadcasters, and kicks Ofcom where it hurts.

Its proposals should force the watchdog to consult regularly with parents who are, after all, in the trenches every day fighting to keep a vestige of innocence in their children’s lives.

I want the glorious Mothers’ Union to take on the chattering classes — and win.

People like my friend and his peers within the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 form a Left- leaning media establishment as set in its ways as any squire in the shires.

Labour and Lib Dem voters to a man and woman, they may see themselves as progressive, but the irony is that these privileged, blinkered people have presided over a dumbed-down, coarsened culture for so long that it’s those bold enough to challenge them who are the true radicals.

We are the ones demanding change. Revolution, if you like — with a manifesto based on respect for taste and human dignity.

We should take the fight to the enemy, starting with the TV watershed, and presenters and producers who think that anything goes.