WARNING:
This is comedy. Anyone likely to take it the wrong way, be offended by satire or have had a triple sense-of-humour-bypass should not read on. Reading on, and THEN taking offence will put you in breach of terms the of reading and any claim of offence will be void. What a shame I even have to say it.
WARNING: This is comedy. Anyone likely to take it the wrong way, be offended by satire or have had a triple sense-of-humour-bypass should not read on. Reading on, and THEN taking offence will put you in breach of terms the of reading and any claim of offence will be void.
Picture the scene if you will. You are on a medieval battlefield and the smell of wood smoke from the camp you left, many miles behind, you still hangs in the morning air. Before you all you can see as far as the eye are masses of men behind shields and behind them, the rising smoke of their own camps. Both sides want to be returning to camp, but both also know that only one side will in fact return. Both sides know that their personal possessions may later held aloft around the campfire as spoils of war.
As you come to the final minutes before battle, you feel your legs shake as adrenaline surges through your body and even the jug of ale you had for breakfast hasn't deadened your senses enough to realise that this really is it. As the rising noise of swords and axes, being banged against shields, reaches deafening volume a man steps from the line and raises his arms. The banging stops at once. The new leader of your army is about to made his pre-battle address, and on removing his helmet you come face to face with George Entwhistle for the first time. "Men. We.....we.. er...we.....n-n-need clear...we need clear and d-d-d-decisive.......er....decisive action to.....er....to erm...." he stammers, unable to even look at his men. You, and the other 20,000 men and women around you, know at once, that this will be the day that you die.
Pure fantasy? Like a scene from some medieval B-Movie you think? Or could this really be a good analogy of something I actually saw from someone supposed to be the leader of many men and women, in the never ending battle to win the ratings war? If you chose the latter as your answer, pat yourself on the back now.
The stammering, hesitant and frankly embarrassing performance of BBC Director General, George Entwhistle made my blood reach critical mass for several reasons. He waves mitigation around like a sword of triumph, using phrases like "I've taken clear and decisive steps to find out what went wrong" - to paraphrase a recent bleating - and this is just not acceptable for a man in his position. CLEAR and DECISIVE should be the normal modus operandi, not an emergency strategy. It's almost beyond belief that in the 21st century the old school tie means more than the ability to actually produce anything of note and the latest fiasco should be taken as being the tip of a very large and very wobbly corporate iceberg, full of people no doubt used to 3 hour liquid lunches, before a robust session of back slapping and mutual ego masturbation.
I'm more than aware of it being tough at the top, but if by being tough you mean 'too much for you to handle' then clearly the top is not where you should be. I think I should be the next Director General, although I'd rename it the 'Head of common sense'. Gone would be the tip-toe approach to modern life, where to risk offending someone about to run off the rails at 500 mph, with a sizeable chunk of taxpayers money wasted, as illustrated by recent events. No, none of the softly softly for me. I'd personally assess the worth of everyone in the organisation, from top to bottom and the sound of rolling heads would resound the length and breadth of this beautiful island. I'd cut the dead wood back with such vigour that entire new species of creative fauna and flora would be free to emerge. I'd nurture talent and say goodbye to those riding the coattails of the real creative forces - which I'm willing to bet my teeth comprises a frighteningly high percentage of the BBC workforce.
What the hell happened to integrity, balls, gumption, the British upper lip and good old common sense? Have we really reached the apex of indifference? Don't we care anymore where our money goes, in financing drivel, hangers on and people who only become passionate and animated about their positions when the axe is hanging over them? What happened to the notion that irrespective of how much slime we had to wade through to reach the land of reassuringly decent and honest programming, we could still find it, at the BBC. I know that new brooms sweep cleanest and complacency is a creeping vine that starts with a foreign leaf on the shoe, and ends up controlling the host completely, but it shouldn't take public outrage to wake up this particular sleeping giant, it should already be leaping continents and making strides to lead us into the future.
Instead we have the same old same old, time after time after time, the statements saying they realise they've made a mistake, it won't happen again headmaster, I promise and the public are tired of it. If Newsnight was a program made by a tiny independent like myself, then I'd expect to have the odd occasion where quality control appear to have taken an early lunch - but it would still only be once in a blue moon, not once a week - but this is a flagship program, with a staff and an editor and controls in place to see this doesn't happen. What the hell has Mr Entwhistle actually been doing while the rest of us have been having the very fabric of our youth eroded away. Those of us over 40 who grew up believing uncle Jimmy was the nearest thing to a living saint, have suffered something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder lately, and I kid you not. The BBC should have been there, tapping into our inner child, looking us reassuringly in the eye and telling us straight that this guy had us all fooled, yes he was a bad man, but we won't get fooled again.
At this stage I'd have played an old episode of Top of the Pops, of The Who doing "Won't get fooled again", just to hammer home the point.
I know many will think I'm just kidding, but at least I know how people work. To follow the Jimmy Savile debacle with a Newsnight program wrongly accusing another poor man of something unspeakable and perhaps the worst crime any person can be accused of, is beyond belief. The fact that the hastily assembled program was not only completely wrong, completely libellous, and completely stupid to commission in the first place was broadcast by the BBC is shocking. The fact that it slipped through the hands of the many staff in place to see this doesn't happen, the researchers, the journalists etc, would be laughable if not so serious. To top it off, this same "Shoddy journalism" getting past the one guy who should have been looking out for further error - Mr Entwhistle himself - leaves me unable to do anything more than shake my head. I am just - and for once - lost for words.
This knee jerk style of program making, the equivalent of being tapped on the shoulder in the dark, then spraying the entire area around you with 20 minutes of machine gun fire, should be the fodder of slapstick comedy, not the norm within an institution that represents each and every British person, as it broadcasts around the globe. We've had too many incidents in the past where we've been ashamed to be British, and being the kind of people we are, when one of our number lets us down badly and in public, we all feel it. For the culprit to be the very epitome of all that is supposed to be great about Great Britain, means that something has to be done. If a tree dies, however much it was loved in its' lifetime, you don't remove one branch, it has to come down. It cannot be allowed to fall later and hurt innocent people. For the BBC to simply replace the branch that started the rot will not cure it. There has to be a vigorous and very transparent felling session in the forest I'm afraid, and this will be the only thing that satisfies a public fed up with excuses, fed up with shoddiness, and frankly, fed up of being fed up.
It's bad enough that most people in the country can barely afford to have the heating on, without having to witness enough hot air emitting from the apologetic Mr Entwhistle, to heat the nations homes well into the next millennium - all wasted, all of it heard before and as always the only thing these folk are ever truly sorry about is the fact that their incompetence has reached a level where even those that have no interest in current affairs, cannot fail to notice that the people we are now allowing to be our leaders, have no more idea about leading real people, in real life, than I have about needle craft. At least were I to attempt to embroider an "I want my license fee back" tea cosy, I'd at least do a little research into how I'd achieve it and why it would be a good idea to do so in the first place. Fancily worded, carefully scripted apologies are no substitute for just doing what it is you're paid to do. Imagine me turning up to entertain at some event people have paid to attend. Now imagine the assembled throng witnessing my doing a crossword in complete silence. After the place had been trashed by people seeking their money back, do you think a little purple prose, delivered with a sombre look, would make people weep in sympathy? No, of course not. Which is why George Entwhistle's professional 'death in slow motion', is all the harder to understand, when he should have been ousted as soon as it became obvious that the old school tie was quickly turning into a noose, big enough for several of those around him too.
Leaders used to be chosen for their strength and wisdom. We had to do it that way, as we wouldn't survive otherwise. Our neighbours, the one's with the better leader, most inspired people and most motivated army, would just leave our broken bodies for the crows to peck at. So we had to make sure we were strong in every way. In modern times, of course, the chances of being injured by a sharp blade, is restricted to using a faulty pencil sharpener, or peeling a potato whilst keeping one eye on Coronation Street, so we've kind of lost the need to select people best suited for purpose. Of course, in any large corporation, as in life, the old maxim "It's not what you know....it's who you know." still hold true even in these enlightened times.
Take politics for example, where most of the country can't even be bothered to turn out to vote, as they know the green team, the yellow team, the blue team and the red team are all the same person underneath the coloured banner. All promising to fill our pockets with money, extend our house for us, make us happier and make us live to be 120 years old, when in reality, the moment they hold power it will be excuse after failure, after excuse after...etc. All are interested in one thing and one thing alone, their own development, and when I say development I mean the big house in the country, the Swiss bank account and the wife that could easily pass for their daughter. We know that, which is why most of us are so jaded about politics. In the case of the BBC, we pay £150 for the privilege of seeing highly paid 'executives' (or pals from the same posh school, as it's properly known) failing, under the unforgiving glare of television lights, to string even one sentence together without stammering, searching the ground for answers and completely failing to convince anyone that their position was ever anything more than a reward for being part of the old boys network. It has to stop, and stop now. Or be stopped!
A lack of basic common sense is a failing in anyone. An inability to hold one's own when questioned live by a seasoned hack like John Humphrey's, is lack of preparation and thereby a fail by default. Those who say how can Entwhistle be responsible when he hasn't been in the job long, should ponder this. If a succession of people were driving your mother to a local bingo evening and 20 seconds into a new driver's shift, he crashed and fatally injured your dear old Mum, you wouldn't say "It's not his fault, it was the guy driving before him!" It's a shame I have to aim so low with that analogy, but I wanted it to be well understood.
Make me Director General from Monday and I'll ave the place a more efficient, more cost effective and more respected organisation within a month. If I fail to do so, I will of course step down, with pockets heavy with the severance payment (in cash of course) for having failed miserably. I'll then retreat - shame faced - with beautiful model wife (complete with dog-in-a-handbag) and peerage, to Florida, where I'll live on private health insurance and die in my sleep aged 99. Can I rely on your vote?
