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Media Monkey's Diary: BBC's Ding Dong row, Giles Coren Media Monkey's Diary: BBC's Ding Dong row, Giles Coren
(6 months later)
✒Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper showed bravery in blogging about Friday's rethink (on Lord Hall's instructions): not to play Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch Is Dead in full in the station's chart show, but instead to cover it (with a brief clip) in a news report. Monkey recalls that the last BBC suit forced to pen a sheepish blog explaining a corporation flip-flop was the hapless Peter Rippon, then editor of Newsnight – and that his error-strewn effort was followed by executives, including Rippon himself, "stepping aside", Lord Patten unwittingly misleading the media, Star Chamber-like inquiries, programme at war with programme, an orgy of backbiting, verbals in the newsroom – and the director general quitting altogether.✒Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper showed bravery in blogging about Friday's rethink (on Lord Hall's instructions): not to play Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch Is Dead in full in the station's chart show, but instead to cover it (with a brief clip) in a news report. Monkey recalls that the last BBC suit forced to pen a sheepish blog explaining a corporation flip-flop was the hapless Peter Rippon, then editor of Newsnight – and that his error-strewn effort was followed by executives, including Rippon himself, "stepping aside", Lord Patten unwittingly misleading the media, Star Chamber-like inquiries, programme at war with programme, an orgy of backbiting, verbals in the newsroom – and the director general quitting altogether.
✒No doubt things won't get as bad as that, but ominously Cooper's piece is not error-free: he calls Ding Dong... "the Judy Garland song" although it's mainly sung by the Munchkins. Hopefully it won't take three weeks, as with Rippon's blog, before it's corrected.✒Did the Iron Lady only pretend she loathed the BBC when PM in order to subdue it? That's the intriguing implication of a story John Simpson tells in a roundup of memories in the Spectator. "'Oh my dear, you are sensitive,' she said to me once when I defended the BBC. 'Don't you see, it's all part of...' Her voice died away, but she clearly meant 'the game'." ✒No doubt things won't get as bad as that, but ominously Cooper's piece is not error-free: he calls Ding Dong... "the Judy Garland song" although it's mainly sung by the Munchkins. Hopefully it won't take three weeks, as with Rippon's blog, before it's corrected.
✒Did the Iron Lady only pretend she loathed the BBC when PM in order to subdue it? That's the intriguing implication of a story John Simpson tells in a roundup of memories in the Spectator. "'Oh my dear, you are sensitive,' she said to me once when I defended the BBC. 'Don't you see, it's all part of...' Her voice died away, but she clearly meant 'the game'."
✒The Times's restaurant critic Giles Coren is causing trouble again. He dismissed Balthazar, the much-hyped London version of a New York brasserie, as "the worst food in Europe", and only learned from a Twitter follower that its owner, Keith McNally, had complained to a US foodie blog about the "inferiority" of UK reviewers ("no one more so than Giles Coren"), "a petty, self-regarding, back-stabbing bunch of narcissists". Typically, Coren was not content with merely hitting back, saying McNally was so "used to having smoke blown up his arse in America, he can't take a bit of plain British honesty"; he also managed a jab at a rival reviewer, the Evening Standard's Fay Maschler, as professionally compromised (Balthazar, he tweeted, had had "nice reviews from [McNally's] friends, such as Fay"), and at the paper reporting the American's outburst – no, he hadn't read the article before being told about it, because he "didn't know the Indy was still going".✒The Times's restaurant critic Giles Coren is causing trouble again. He dismissed Balthazar, the much-hyped London version of a New York brasserie, as "the worst food in Europe", and only learned from a Twitter follower that its owner, Keith McNally, had complained to a US foodie blog about the "inferiority" of UK reviewers ("no one more so than Giles Coren"), "a petty, self-regarding, back-stabbing bunch of narcissists". Typically, Coren was not content with merely hitting back, saying McNally was so "used to having smoke blown up his arse in America, he can't take a bit of plain British honesty"; he also managed a jab at a rival reviewer, the Evening Standard's Fay Maschler, as professionally compromised (Balthazar, he tweeted, had had "nice reviews from [McNally's] friends, such as Fay"), and at the paper reporting the American's outburst – no, he hadn't read the article before being told about it, because he "didn't know the Indy was still going".
✒As well as being ubiquitous on TV and radio, Charles Moore is very much the darling of the Telegraph titles he used to edit, and presumably they will serialise the first volume of his authorised biography of Lady Thatcher once it's published immediately after her funeral – some might see this as unseemly haste, but the Daily Mail was able to be quicker off the mark in extracting a biog by Robin Harris which cheekily has the same title, Not For Turning. Relations between "Lord Snooty" Moore and the more populist present Telegraph regime have not always been so warm, however: only nine months ago, editor Tony Gallagher reacted to a Spectator article by his predecessor by emailing a colleague "Moore is a tw*t".✒As well as being ubiquitous on TV and radio, Charles Moore is very much the darling of the Telegraph titles he used to edit, and presumably they will serialise the first volume of his authorised biography of Lady Thatcher once it's published immediately after her funeral – some might see this as unseemly haste, but the Daily Mail was able to be quicker off the mark in extracting a biog by Robin Harris which cheekily has the same title, Not For Turning. Relations between "Lord Snooty" Moore and the more populist present Telegraph regime have not always been so warm, however: only nine months ago, editor Tony Gallagher reacted to a Spectator article by his predecessor by emailing a colleague "Moore is a tw*t".
✒Lord Sugar is in the running for another Bafta gong, with a nomination for The Young Apprentice in the awkwardly titled "reality and constructed factual" category. Mischievous Sugar-watchers are hoping his lordship loses to the trust-fund toffs of Made in Chelsea, if only to test how far his enthusiasm for reality TV extends – when The Only Way Is Essex won its Bafta, he tweeted "Brilliant! ... U have no idea what a smack in face this is for the intellectual snobs lovies (sic) in TV production. Brill!"✒Lord Sugar is in the running for another Bafta gong, with a nomination for The Young Apprentice in the awkwardly titled "reality and constructed factual" category. Mischievous Sugar-watchers are hoping his lordship loses to the trust-fund toffs of Made in Chelsea, if only to test how far his enthusiasm for reality TV extends – when The Only Way Is Essex won its Bafta, he tweeted "Brilliant! ... U have no idea what a smack in face this is for the intellectual snobs lovies (sic) in TV production. Brill!"
✒How did Holly Willoughby react to Thursday's Daily Mail rant from Jon Roseman (a "washed-up agent", according to Phillip Schofield) condemning her as a "bimbo" epitomising the sad decline in the IQ of female presenters since the days when he was representing Jill Dando and Fern Britton? She could be found in This Morning's cookery segment that day rolling rice balls in her hands – some round, some, er, more elongated – and then coating them in breadcrumbs, giggling about it being "so inappropriate" as she bent down each time towards the camera. Still, the Mail was perhaps a little two-faced in running this bizarre op-ed tantrum: it features Willoughby often enough – more than 1,000 articles about her can be found on Mail Online – so what's the objection to ITV doing so?✒How did Holly Willoughby react to Thursday's Daily Mail rant from Jon Roseman (a "washed-up agent", according to Phillip Schofield) condemning her as a "bimbo" epitomising the sad decline in the IQ of female presenters since the days when he was representing Jill Dando and Fern Britton? She could be found in This Morning's cookery segment that day rolling rice balls in her hands – some round, some, er, more elongated – and then coating them in breadcrumbs, giggling about it being "so inappropriate" as she bent down each time towards the camera. Still, the Mail was perhaps a little two-faced in running this bizarre op-ed tantrum: it features Willoughby often enough – more than 1,000 articles about her can be found on Mail Online – so what's the objection to ITV doing so?
✒At Channel 4, the commitment to provide challenging primetime fare appears to be faltering. One Mile Away, Penny Woolcock's award-winning inner city documentary received spectacular advance coverage, including a two-page spread in the Observer and a classic BBC "nug" (a plug posing as news, usually about BBC programmes) on The World at One on the day of transmission – it helps, of course, if you have a spin-minded ex-politician, the incoming BBC strategy boss James Purnell, as producer. But, with current shows Bedtime Live and The Intern both flopping, more peak-time ratings damage was evidently unthinkable: it went out in the graveyard slot of 11.10pm.✒At Channel 4, the commitment to provide challenging primetime fare appears to be faltering. One Mile Away, Penny Woolcock's award-winning inner city documentary received spectacular advance coverage, including a two-page spread in the Observer and a classic BBC "nug" (a plug posing as news, usually about BBC programmes) on The World at One on the day of transmission – it helps, of course, if you have a spin-minded ex-politician, the incoming BBC strategy boss James Purnell, as producer. But, with current shows Bedtime Live and The Intern both flopping, more peak-time ratings damage was evidently unthinkable: it went out in the graveyard slot of 11.10pm.
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