Bbc

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Public will now choose UK's Eurovision entry – but should we trust the BBC with the shortlist?

For almost two decades, Britain has failed dismally at Eurovision – and deservedly. Our entries have been so bad as to represent a passive-aggressive insult to an entire continent. You can blame the BBC: it picks the song, and just doesn’t understand Eurovision. It seems to think it’s the equivalent of a musical bad taste party, where the aim is to send in cheesy songs. You Europeans have awful taste, the BBC seems to say, so here’s a song so crap that you’ll love it! They tend not to. Today, the BBC has announced that the public will choose the song. Its musical politburo won’t. This is a step forward, but it

Steerpike

Guardian's Nick Watt lined up for Newsnight role

The Guardian set tongues wagging across Westminster in December when its editor Katharine Viner appointed two women to share the role of political editor. Although the paper’s chief political correspondent Nicholas Watt had been seen as the favourite to succeed Patrick Wintour, Sky News‘s Anushka Asthana and Observer economics editor Heather Stewart were offered the role as a job-share, after applying together. Happily Watt appeared to be gracious in defeat. While he tweeted that he was ‘disappointed’ to miss out on the role, he said he was looking forward to working with the ‘formidable duo’. https://twitter.com/nicholaswatt/status/675286446832504832 Alas word reaches Steerpike that Watt may not have much time working for Asthana and Stewart

Monday

Steerpike

Labour's war with the BBC wages on: 'Marr's Corbyn interview was a disgrace'

Jeremy Corbyn’s interview on The Andrew Marr Show yesterday saw the Labour leader wax lyrical on the virtues of Trident submarines without warheads, discuss the prospect of peace talks with ISIS, and ponder a deal with Argentina over the Falklands. While he also discussed housing and the junior doctor strike, his more divisive comments have today been followed up in the papers, with The Sun running an ‘Off His War Head’ splash. Although Labour brains seem unhappy with the way the interview went, little blame is being placed with their dear leader. Instead, party members appear to be blaming their enemy of the month — the BBC. John Prescott has taken to Twitter to describe the interview

Thursday

James Delingpole

Nature is red in tooth and claw. Get over it

Wild Lone is one of the most violent books I’ve ever read. It was published just before the last war and it doesn’t pull its punches: mothers are slaughtered with their babies; brothers and sisters are eaten alive; callous parents look on indifferently as their sick children die slowly beneath them; the few survivors almost invariably succumb to disease, cold or starvation. Every child should read it, for it tells you how the world really is. The natural world, I mean. It was written by one of the last century’s great amateur naturalists, Denys Watkins-Pitchford, under his nom-de-plume ‘BB’ and it purports to be the biography of a ‘Pytchley fox’

Kate Chisholm

Chance encounters

Some might say that Jeremy Corbyn is cloth-eared, tone-deaf, socially inept but on Monday morning, as the death of the pop artist David Bowie scrambled the agenda on Radio 4’s Today programme, he was as graceful and twinkle-toed as Bowie himself. The opposition leader had been invited on to the ‘big slot’ just after the eight o’clock bulletin to talk about his ‘shock’ reshuffle last week. David Cameron and the Archbishop of Canterbury, no less, had already provided their rent-a-quote verdicts on Bowie’s life and death. Nick Robinson asked Corbyn for his thoughts. Quick as a flash, he responded, ‘Does that mean I’m joining the great and the good…?’ Before

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Labour complains about shadow minister's resignation on BBC

The Labour party has this evening complained about the BBC arranging for Stephen Doughty to announce his resignation on the Daily Politics. A spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn said: ‘By the BBC’s own account, BBC journalists and presenters proposed and secured the resignation of a shadow minister on air in the immediate run-up to Prime Minister’s Questions, apparently to ensure maximum news and political impact. That was evidently done before any notice of resignation was sent to the Labour leader. ‘Such orchestration of political controversy is an unacceptable breach of the BBC’s role and statutory obligations ‘Trust in the impartiality and independence of the BBC is essential. The BBC’s role is

Steerpike

Laura Kuenssberg gets Corbynistas in a spin over reshuffle scoop

In recent months brains at the BBC have undertaken a number of steps to tackle ‘anti-Corbyn bias’ head on at the corporation. After the Beeb’s former political editor Nick Robinson wrote to colleagues warning them against anti-Corbyn bias in the political coverage, the message was then picked up by the comedy department. Barry Humphries revealed this week that he was told he could not do a planned Corbyn joke on a BBC comedy show — unless he also did one about David Cameron. Alas for all their efforts, it just isn’t enough to keep the angry Corbynistas at bay. Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, has found herself in the firing line this morning after a blog — which has now

Thursday

James Delingpole

Coming up for air | 7 January 2016

Gosh what a breath of fresh air was Andrew Davies’s War & Peace adaptation (BBC1, Sundays) after all the stale rubbish that was on over Christmas. There were times when the yuletide TV tedium got so bad that I considered preparing us all a Jonestown-style punchbowl. That way, we would never have had to endure Walliams and Friend nor the special time-travel edition of what everyone is now rightly calling Shitlock. Sherlock has a terminal case of Doctor Who disease. That is, it has become so knowing, so self-referential, so — ugh! — meta that it no longer feels under any obligation to put in the hard yards needed to

Kate Chisholm

Good cop, bad cop

One of the most shocking items of recent news has been the bald statistic that the number of people shot by law enforcement officers in the United States last year was 1,136. Not died by gangland shooting, domestic violence or terrorist attack. But killed by those who are meant to be preventing such deaths. Many of them are black or Hispanic. As if on cue, the World Service this week launched a documentary series to find out why this is happening. What are the deep structural issues that give rise to such inequalities of experience and opportunity in the (supposed) Land of the Free? The first episode of The Compass:

Wednesday

James Delingpole

War & Peace is actually just an upmarket Downton Abbey

Gosh what a breath of fresh air was Andrew Davies’s War & Peace adaptation (BBC1, Sundays) after all the stale rubbish that was on over Christmas. There were times when the yuletide TV tedium got so bad that I considered preparing us all a Jonestown-style punchbowl. That way, we would never have had to endure Walliams and Friend nor the special time-travel edition of what everyone is now rightly calling Shitlock. Sherlock has a terminal case of Doctor Who disease. That is, it has become so knowing, so self-referential, so — ugh! — meta that it no longer feels under any obligation to put in the hard yards needed to

Tuesday

Steerpike

BBC execs fail to see the funny side of Dame Edna's Jeremy Corbyn joke

Oh dear. After Nick Robinson declared that he was on a mission to tackle anti-Corbyn bias in the BBC’s political coverage, it appears some brains at Broadcasting House may be taking his sentiment a little too far. It now seems that there is also an anti-Corbyn bashing rule when it comes to satire. Barry Humphries — who is well-known for playing his comic creation Dame Edna Everage — has revealed in an interview with the Radio Times the difficulties he encountered when in discussions with the Beeb about appearing on Michael McIntyre’s Christmas show as Dame Edna. Humphries suggested he could do a joke about the man of the moment: Jeremy Corbyn. Alas,

Thursday

James Walton

Losing the plot | 31 December 2015

On the face of it, ITV’s Peter & Wendy sounded like a perfect family offering for Boxing Day: an adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s novel, with a framing story about how much Peter Pan can still mean to children today. In fact, though, the programme suffered from one serious flaw for any Boxing Day entertainment — if you were slightly drunk, slightly hungover or both, it was almost impossible to understand. Then again, I suspect that even the most weirdly sober of viewers might have struggled with a drama that never seemed to know the difference between the intriguingly suggestive and the utterly baffling. The opening sequence played to one of

Monday

Douglas Murray

'Religion of peace' is not a harmless platitude | 28 December 2015

We’re closing 2015 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No10: Douglas Murray’s piece about Islam and violence, first written in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks but read most (and shared most widely) after the Bataclan atrocity.  The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each bloody Islamist assault. In France, Britain, Germany, America and nearly every other country in the world it remains government policy to say that any and all attacks carried out in the name of Mohammed have ‘nothing to do with Islam’. It was said by George W. Bush after 9/11, Tony

Tuesday

Steerpike

Is John Humphrys turning into a 'patronising old duffer'?

This morning Today show presenters Justin Webb and John Humphrys found themselves under fire after they listed the guest editors that will be taking control of the show as of next week. When it came to name Miriam González Durántez’s upcoming slot, Webb said: ‘you’ll hear from the lawyer Miriam González, also of course Nick Clegg’s wife’. A number of bothered listeners were quick to complain online that she was the only guest editor to be described in relation to her partner. While one could argue that González first came to the media’s attention through her politician husband, this is not the first time the Today presenters have been criticised over their attitude to women. In fact in a recent

Sunday

Wynn Wheldon

Spectator books of the year: Wynn Wheldon enjoys a new history of the BBC

A long time ago the novelist Marghanita Laski opined that the BBC had been the greatest single influence for good upon the life of the nation since the decline of the churches. A little later my father, Huw Wheldon, called it ‘one of the great institutions of the western world’. Charlotte Higgins regards the corporation as ‘the most powerful British institution of them all’. Her history of the BBC, This New Noise (Guardian/Faber, £12.99) is intellectually coherent and a pleasure to read. It gives proper credit to the ‘pioneer of TV current affairs’, Grace Wyndham Goldie. Bernard Cornwell’s Waterloo (Collins, £8.99) is excellent, chiefly in its willingness to tell the

Thursday

James Delingpole

Was my article the inspiration for this brilliant BBC dramatisation?

The two things I hate most about Christmas are a) Advertland showing me how sparkly and joyous my home and bright-eyed kids are at this time of year, and b) the Doctor Who Xmas special telling me that if only I can open my heart and put cynicism aside, then I too can enjoy a mash-up of Dickens, C.S. Lewis and the Brothers Grimm, where daleks with tinsel round their guns exterminate the spirit of Scrooge as laughing children come pouring from the Ice Queen’s dungeon and something nice happens on a London housing estate. Or similar. That’s what was so great about We’re Doomed! The Dad’s Army Story (BBC2,

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

Donald Trump represents the views of millions of Americans. Does the BBC not realise this?

If you saw the BBC Ten O’Clock News last night you will have witnessed Nick Bryant’s dispassionate, even-handed treatment of Republican candidate Donald Trump. Trump had called for an end to Muslim immigration into the United States. Bryant’s face was puffed up with outrage; he almost spat out the words of the story and ended by saying that ‘this is the gutter’. https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/nick-bryant-discusses-donald-trumps-comments-about-muslims-on-bbc-ten-oclock-news It does not matter how often they are told, it does not matter how many complaints they receive: the BBC continues to pursue its own political agenda at every possible opportunity. If it addressed this problem it might find that fewer people wished to see the licence

Monday

Miles Goslett

Alan Yentob's 'resignation' only makes him less accountable

The BBC’s spin doctors will be broadly happy at the coverage Alan Yentob’s ‘resignation’ as BBC Creative Director has generated, but licence fee payers should not be so pleased. For, on closer inspection, the whole thing is a gigantic swizz. Yentob may have relinquished his £183,000 salary, and his executive status, but it is now obvious that he will remain a very well paid fixture at the BBC for some time yet – and an even less accountable one. Firstly, it is important to note that as the Daily Telegraph reported today, by standing down from this job, Yentob escaped an internal BBC inquiry into allegations that he interfered with BBC News’s

Thursday

Peter Robins

New word order | 3 December 2015

In the basement of a busy café in Hockley, Nottingham, which may not have known exactly what it was letting itself in for, a young woman is loudly dissecting an unsatisfactory lunch: ‘Deep in my heart I know I love chips.’ In another basement a few hundred yards away, lit by a single floor lamp, another woman is detailing the process of a man’s decline with tear-jerking, understated tenderness. For today only, both women are going by the name Bryan. They are among 60 volunteer performers in But I Know This City!, a unique adaptation of B.S. Johnson’s strange and sometimes wonderful 1969 novel The Unfortunates. You might remember The

Quentin Letts

Diary - 3 December 2015

First, an apology. Thanks to me, all journalists at BBC Radio’s ethics and religion division are being sent for indoctrination in climate change. Sorry. In July I made a short Radio 4 programme with them called What’s the Point of the Met Office?, which accidentally sent orthodox warmists into a boiling tizzy. Amid jolly stuff about the history of weather predictions and the drippiness of today’s forecasters, we touched on parliamentary lobbying done by the state-funded Met Office. All hell broke out. Cataracts and hurricanoes! The Met Office itself was unfazed but the eco-lobby, stirred by BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin, went nuts. I was accused of not giving a