Don’t blame the BBC for Clarkson

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/22/bbc-part-of-who-we-are-jeremy-clarkson

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Simonstone Hall looks like a nice hotel. Log fires, tartan carpets, handy for the Yorkshire Dales.

And two restaurants! Had Jeremy Clarkson arrived in time, rather than at 10pm as he famously did, Simonstone Hall would have offered him a choice between the Brasserie and Fell restaurants. According to the hotel’s website: “Either is the perfect place to enjoy a relaxed or intimate dinner.”

Relaxed or intimate; I like that choice. It’s quite impossible, of course, to be simultaneously relaxed and intimate, as I proved to my husband on our wedding night.

The down side of Simonstone Hall: as widely reported, it’s hard to get a steak if you arrive late. There might only be soup.

How you feel about that depends on what you’re used to, I suppose. A man who reviewed the place on TripAdvisor in January had also turned up after the kitchen had shut and particularly applauds the place for offering a nice soup. He was touched, impressed and grateful. There is no mention of punching anyone.

Then again, we don’t know the flavour of soup on offer. Mushroom soup and you would be pleased. Celery, you might have to shove a producer across a room. (St John Ambulance are on stand-by for the nights it’s Vichysoisse.)

It may appear that I am not taking the “fracas” very seriously. It’s hard to, what with the central image being a colossal squabble over soup. It’s a bit Acorn Antiques, isn’t it?

I feel sorry for hungry, grumpy, tired Jeremy Clarkson and I feel sorry for hapless, browbeaten, possibly injured producer Oisin Tymon – but when you think about the misery and death caused by food shortages around the world, it’s nearly impossible to think that what happened to either TV man in Simonstone Hall that night can really matter terribly much.

What does matter is the BBC. What gives this story a greater significance, and longer-reaching implications, is that it’s another stick of dynamite beneath that precious institution at a vulnerable time. Jeremy Clarkson was biting the hand that feeds even as he snapped at the hand that didn’t, because – the moment the fracas occurred – the corporation was totally screwed, whatever it did.

And this just isn’t a safe time for putting the BBC in that position. There’s an election coming; politicians are desperate to get on the record with strong-sounding statements on accessible topics. After that election, whoever wins will be handling the charter renewal negotiations that will determine the future of the licence fee.

A look at the reaction to this “fracas” gives a clue to the BBC’s chances. The tabloid press – which sees the corporation as a subsidised rival, from whose demise they would benefit financially – has ripped the broadcaster apart for suspending Clarkson and making mountains out of molehills, failing to pour oil on troubled water, bad management etc. But, had the BBC not suspended him, those same voices would have ripped it apart for pushing allegations of physical assault under the carpet, proving it has learned nothing from the past, etc.

For the Conservatives, Maria Miller (who thinks Jeremy Clarkson is “a legend”) said: “The BBC needs to be better at managing its talent.” For Labour, Chi Onwurah (who thinks Jeremy Clarkson “doesn’t represent or understand today’s Britain”) said “Where he fits into the BBC’s remit is really difficult to understand.”

Chi Onwurah’s comments are particularly annoying because Jeremy Clarkson patently does “represent and understand today’s Britain” – the exact, substantial part of today’s Britain that the Labour party currently doesn’t.

Onwurah, an obviously bright woman, can’t possibly have failed to notice Clarkson’s popular rhetoric and vast national fan base, so her gist can only be that those people don’t matter.

That’s an exasperating approach from a member of parliament, before you even get to the bizarre conclusion that failing to represent Britain (or the Britain that matters) makes “where he fits into the BBC’s remit… really difficult to understand”.

Is it? Difficult? The BBC has a remit to inform and entertain. Clarkson does both. That is not complicated.

But the point of comparing these two women’s comments is that whether an MP is Labour or Tory, whether she loves Jeremy Clarkson or hates him, whether she considers him a legend or an irrelevance, she finds the BBC at fault. Either it has cocked up by risking his loss or by employing him at all.

Parliament and the press are united in extrapolating from a small-minded soup spat to a massive, unfair debate about the broadcaster’s fitness. Whether or not anyone hit that producer, everyone’s kicking the BBC.

And it isn’t just a bit of fun. Clarkson will be all right; Oisin Tymon will be all right; but the BBC really might not be.

Once you escape the debate about funding and politics – however you feel about “state broadcasting” or privatisation; whether you think the corporation is biased to the left, biased to the right, or the closest to fair and even-handed that any broadcaster in history has ever been or ever could be – the fact is that the BBC makes a lot of programmes that people love. It’s part of who we are.

That’s as complex as the licensing issue needs to be. There are shows we loved as children, shows we love now, and the vast majority of us would be forever sad and sorry if it ceased to exist in basically its current form.

So beware, every time you hear the BBC mentioned in this Clarkson row; ask yourself why it’s being mentioned and what the mentioner’s vested interests are.

The BBC as an institution didn’t offer that tired presenter a bowl of soup, neither did it reject the soup and turn violent. And yet, somehow, it is the BBC that’s in the soup again.