Terrence and Philip

Martin Rowson in today’s Guardian sums up my own thinking on the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand affair, really. No prizes for guessing whose physog is going to be on top of the bonfire this Guy Fawkes night, eh? But, as the cartoonist Banx commented in The Financial Times this morning, the scariest Hallowe’en trick-or-treat costume of all is the ‘hedge fund manager’ horror mask. Let’s get a sense of proportion, shall we kiddies?
Of course, I have been fascinated at this latest media frenzy. BBC Radio 5 devoted its hour-long morning phone-in to it three days running! I downloaded them all onto my new iPod! You betcha, as Sarah Palin would say.
Naturally enough, this outrage on the part of the fuddy-duddy tabloid press over an interview with ‘foul mouthed comedians’ did give me a strong sense of déjà-vu, that history from thirty years ago was repeating itself like a big burping belly that’s too full of Country Life English butter.
Well, today I found not one but two copies of Thursday’s Daily Mail on the bus. I was able to read, for the first time, a full transcript of Ross and Brand’s notorious prank telephone call, available only in snippets elsewhere. Here it is, least you forget how terrible it is, the Mail shrieked. I read it and I now have a shameful confession to make. You see, previously, when all I had to go on was a bald description of what was said, filtered through Terence Blacker in The Independent and others, I was sickened. It sounded vile and disgusting. The worst kind of bullying and taunting. But, when I was able to read it in context, and saw what those two fonejackers had actually said... I’m sorry, but I laughed. I thought it was funny.
Now, Jonathan Ross is a man I have no time for, but I do have a soft spot for Russell Brand. I know plenty of people hate him, but he is a friend of a friend* and that predisposes me to like him, I suppose, though I genuinely do think he is gifted at what he does. He pretends to be an idiot, when he is really very, very smart, while Ross is much the other way around.
Anyway, I shall leave aside the details of the prank call itself to draw attention to an interesting little detail in the Daily Mail warts-and-all transcript**. ‘Here is the bit that was not broadcast,’ they said, printing a section that even the few who had originally tuned in would not have heard. Now, I wondered, where did they get that from? Did their podcast have a special hidden bonus track at the end? Or did it come to them from the production team? Well, what do you think?
You see, I think this is not about whatever jokes Ross and Brand may or may not have thrown out in their ill-advised chat-show. That didn’t bother anyone for weeks, anyway. No, I think the joke that this was really all about was Ross’s off-the-cuff remark a little while ago that he was paid so much that he was ’worth as much as one thousand journalists...’ Now, to journalists that’s a challenge. That’s like a white glove across the face... it gives them the right to choice of weapons. And they have a mighty armory.
If they were going to write an honest op-ed piece about it, I reckon it would go a bit like this:

‘You think you’re worth a thousand of us, do you Ross? Well, watch what we can do to you, boy. How d’you fancy being the new Jade Goody, then? We can force the worst financial crisis in sixty years right off the front page to make room for your ugly mug every day... We can make the two minute hate last a whole week. We can cost you a million quid and make you smile as you let it go. That’s what we can do. And what can you do? Where’s this power of a thousand journalists that you’ve got then? Nowhere, chum. We can bend you over and make you take every inch, and there’s not a damned thing you can do to stop us. You may think you’re the biz, but you’re just another fucking civilian. We made you and we can break you. Just so’s you don’t forget who’s boss.’

By the way, that’s a warning to us as well, of course. Just so’s we don’t forget who really runs this country.

Footnotes:
*Although, weirdly, so is Jonathan Ross, now I come to think about it....
**Of course, the uncut version has found its way onto YouTube for those who would like to catch it It has already had 242,837 views... a bigger audience than the original radio programme had in the first place... while a shorter, but higher resolution copy has had three times the original audience...