The Ross \ Brand \ Sachs Kerfuffle...

[SiM]

I think it was out of order to be honest. There is taking the mick out of people and they crossed the line with it.

She is quite cute and kinky I'll giver that. Why is she a slut?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...andfather.html

Miss Baillie - who dances under the stage name Voluptua in burlesque troupe The Satanic Sluts

[dangel]

Chill Stew

Looks like brand's resigned and they're all apologies anyway. Doubt either will suffer - more likely the taxpayer will as and when the BBC get fined.

[kopite]

What Ross and Brand did was wrong but IMO the big issue is that the BBC let it go out. Surelly someone must have thought it was really bad taste and was going to cause a lot of problems.

The BBC are supposed to be the moral broadcasting organisation who are above childish and purile things. This has proved that they employ some pretty stupid ppl (aimed more at the production team and the back room staff.) You`d have thought they would have had a strong team behind Brands program especially with his track record of Stunts(Wasnt it the brits where he made jokes about robbie williams, and at his shows wasnt there a kick up about him rining the police live whilst on stage?)

[Stewart]

Chill Stew

Looks like brand's resigned and they're all apologies anyway. Doubt either will suffer - more likely the taxpayer will as and when the BBC get fined.

Yeah I think he's walked away from the radio show. Heads are rolling!

[Ramedge]

She is quite hot though, and looks quite kinky with the burlesque stuff

hmmmmmmm I don't know.

I reckon she'll do quite well out of this. Could be some good publicity that will make her a bit more well known, Who knows she may even end up on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross in a couple of months heh

[Funkstar]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...andfather.html

Miss Baillie - who dances under the stage name Voluptua in burlesque troupe The Satanic Sluts

ah, that makes sense. I did wonder why Ross made those specific comments about her and no-one on 6Music news would say what she did, someone they were interviewing went as far as saying "he's an actor and she does what she does" (parafrasing, but you get the idea).

[HSK]

It's all a bit OTT to be honest. I found it stupid/funny, but in bad taste. Seems like J. Ross instigated it all, and R. Brand got excited and went along with it, but seemed to be aware it wasn't a good career move (not in those words).

But would of thought J. Ross should of known better.

[floppybootstomp]

I thought they were bang out of order to be honest.

I haven't watched TV in over ten years and I don't listen to Radio Two but I remember Ross as being entertaining and funny, despite his taste for underage females. Well, ok, she was 16, but...

I've seen Russell Brand in St Trinians but that's it, so don't know much about him. They upset Andrew Sachs by all accounts and that, in my book, ain't funny.

Tell you what, if one of them left a message on my answerphone saying he'd goosed my daughter I'd get a few mates together, find him and give him a good kicking. Seriously. Even if he had shaped up with her, which apparently Brand has.

Will agree that the UK tabloids have blown it out of proportion (from what I hear, anyway, I never buy or read 'newspapers') but I think they crossed the line.

Still, neither's gonna suffer financially are they?

The girl, Georgina Baillie, will do well out of this probably.

A long time ago there was a band named Fox. Their singer was named Noosha Fox and she was horny as hell in a large chested kind of way. They recorded a song called Georgina Bailey. Is there a link here?

[Vibein]

Just listened to this, shows just how the papers can get their teeth into something.

Brand and Ross should have known better, I did have a little chuckle though

[petrefax]

the problem i have with it is, that's her grandfather!

now, personally i couldn't care less what sort of messages anyone left me on my answerphone, say what you like to me, i'm thick skinned enough to take it but if they did it to my grandparents i'd go ballistic.

also look at it from sachs's point of view, that's his granddaughter. whatever she does for a living she's always going to be his little girl and i doubt he really wants to think about her & brand going at it.

regardless of what her profession is, she is entitled to the same respect as anyone else, a lot of the pro-brand / ross camp are saying about "she's a slag anyway, she does porn" that's irtrelevant, they crossed a line when they took this to her grandfathers door


sounds to me as tho ross started it but brand is paying the consequences for it. i don't suppose the BBC will want to lose ross, he's a bigger ratings-puller than brand (despite being the worlds worst, most unfunny chat show host)

as for the daily mail readers who have jumped on the bandwagon, that's just ridiculous. brand's show is not the sort of show they'd like, nor would they normally listen to it, but a whiff of scandal and they are all downloading the podcast just so they can ring the BBC to complain. for god's sake!

oh, and as for MP's debating it, surely they have better things to do?

[santa claus]

Stop the mindless spam now, please.

On topic.

Sorry Stewart.

I just think the whole 'prank' was babbling, shrill, vulgar and repetitive. I mean, it's just not funny and we're fed this junk day in day out. Preening and backcombing your hair are surely not the qualifications for an entertainment personality these days are they?

Oh no, Brand is going to be on every show on TV explaining himself and making more 'funnies'. *groan*

[Powderhound]

Good riddance IMO. Russel Brand has got to be one of the worst comedians on TV/ radio these days. Hos HIGNFY appearance was excruciating.

[Rave]

The facts of the case as I see it are thus:

1) Sachs failed to answer the phone for a pre-arranged interview. Pretty rude.

2) Jonathan Ross then says that Brand and Sachs's granddaughter have had it off. Pretty rude.

3) Ross and Brand then fail to ameliorate the offence with their subsequent messages. Sachs still fails to answer the phone as arranged. Rudeness all round.

4) Program is broadcast on Radio 2. Total of 2 people complain.

5) A week later, Sachs's agent compalains to the papers. Now it's a story.

6) 10,000 busybody rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish complain to the BBC.

7) Gordon Brown says that their behaviour is "inappropriate and unacceptable".

So that's where I lost it. In 1997 Gordon Brown said “I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the future”. And in the 11 years since, we've seen under his watch as Chancellor and then PM, a massive boom and bust in house prices which has now put us at risk of a massive recession and saddled my generation of taxpayers with an enormous government debt which we'll be expected to pay off. The fact that that fat **** dares to lecture anyone else on inappropriate behaviour utterly beggars belief.

[Saracen]

They've made puerility into an art form. I hope they remain suspended not because of this but because they are nattering, giggley and tedious and a complete waste of air time. Can't we have some talented people on that are really entertaining - the sell by date on these two expired a long time ago.

Ross fancies himself as a lothario and Brand is, well, who is he?

I can't agree ..... that they stay suspended. Fired? Well, that's a better bet.

Ross might have been cutting edge many years ago, and I guess he still does an okay job on film reviews, but he's been a one-trick pony in comedy terms for years.

The BBC is supposed to be a public service broadcaster, and in that context, I have a couple of issues with Ross. Firstly, so much of his material is tacky and talentless. Secondly, he'd be ludicrously overpaid if he was paid 10% of what he is paid. Thirdly, it's offensive that such a twonk receives that kind of remuneration from licence fees. I mean, it'd be bad enough if it was a commercial station, but the notion of paying that sort of rate from compulsory licence fees is grossly offensive. At least with a commercial station, there'd be some independent accountability in that if advertisers felt the public were upset enough (and it sure seems the public were upset enough) advertisers would ensure Ross and/or Brand were fired, by pulling advertising if they weren't, for fear of being associated with it.

So, personally, I feel Ross ought to be fired because that contract was a travesty against the public purse in the first place. I can't for the life of me see how £16,000 a day is justified from licence fees. The BBC is resorting to crass rating-seeking and it shouldn't. If he can justify that salary from a commercial station, let a commercial station pay it.

So that's my first gripe, and it's nothing to do with the current farce.

But the current situation beggars belief. That Brand could pull a stunt like that doesn't surprise me. How bright he actually is, I don't know, but he certainly seems to work hard at portraying a public persona as being a berk, and if it's half-accurate, then this is no surprise. And at least he's had the good grace to resign, which is more than we've seen from Jonathon Dross. But then, he probably didn't lose a £16,000/day contract by resigning. But for a bloke in his mid-40's, we might have expected Mr Ross to either have outgrown such juvenile antics by now, seeing as most of us outgrow that kind of thing before we leave school ..... probably infant school. But if he hasn't grown any common sense, we might at least expect such a highly paid star of a major public service broadcaster to have at least developed a vestigal sense of common decency by now. I mean, ringing the grandfather?

If that was my family, I wouldn't want to see him fired. I'd want to see him with his nuts in a slowly tightening vice. Now that, Mr Ross, really would be a funny bit of "out there" comedy, a worthwhile 'prank' and a show I'd pay to see.

But the really stunning aspect of all this? ..... that some executive at the BBC approved all this for transmission. I mean, what were they thinking? And, according to the stories, Andrew Sachs was contacted for approval to transmit, didn't give it and they transmitted anyway.


All joking, and vitriol, aside celebs set examples. And examples set by major BBC figures ought to provide a good example. If they can't, they have no place on the BBC. Sure, comedy can have an edge, but if they don't have a reasonable sense of where an acceptable line is, then they can't be and shouldn't be trusted on a publicly funded network.

This 'prank' was so far beyond the line of common decency that I find it hard to believe either of these idiots could seriously have thought it was funny.

They both ought to be fired, and Brand ruined that by quitting. And, subject to what details (if any) ever eventually reach the public domain, so should the idiot that decided to approve transmission. Because those phone calls were, in my view, grossly offensive and that's bad enough. But to compound the offence to Andrew Sachs and his family by broadcasting it ... that's utterly unsupportable.

[Rave]

I'd better go to bed. But I will be emailing Gordon Brown tomorrow to ask how he has the effrontery to accuse anybody else of inacceptable behaviour.

[Saracen]

I'd better go to bed. But I will be emailing Gordon Brown tomorrow to ask how he has the effrontery to accuse anybody else of inacceptable behaviour.

He's a politician. The one thing he has excess stock of is effrontery.