The comeback starts here
So, "disgraced" television presenter Jonathan Ross has designed the free wrapping paper in today's Guardian (was there ever a more pointless promotional idea, by the way? - and they do it every damn year). That's his big face at the top of the page. I quite like the fact that they've chosen a slightly contrite expression. But hey, it's for charity. He drew a picture for charity! He's not all bad. While he's in Hampstead-based exile, all the chatter out here is of him having his wings clipped when he returns on January 24, that the BBC is looking at its policy of large contract fees, that there will be less swearing across the networks - a smaller personality than Ross would have trouble returning to this pathetic, diluted, fearful new world (which he helped create, don't forget). Daily Mail readers would obviously prefer it if Ross were forced to roll a huge rock up a steep hill, which then rolls back down to the bottom, so he has to push it back up again, forever. The rest of us probably assume he'll be back and normal service will be resumed. But will it? What will a post-Sachsgate Ross be like? Will he be any good? We don't like the way he is sexually aggressive towards female guests, but without that outlet for his personality, will he actually be able to form sentences? Likewise, the swearing. Do you really think family man Gordon Ramsay would be able to broadcast without swearing?
As it happens, I hear Ross has been filming Sport Relief Does The Apprentice, which won't air until his work-ban is over. That's for charity, too - and a programme he told Alan Sugar on his chat show that he'd love to do, but doesn't have the time. Well, he's got the time now.
So, how do we feel about Jonathan's contrite face on the front of a newspaper? And what will we use his wrapping paper for?
posted by Andrew Collins @ 9:44 AM
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I hadn't seen the charity wrapping paper in previous years in The Guardian, but saw the promotion for it in this Saturday's paper.
When I eventually found it, and showed it to my wife, we were both IN TEARS. It was genuinely the funniest thing we had seen in the papers for many years, combining a dazzling array of stupid 21st century Nathan Barley media cliches in one slim page: Pointless celebrity! Bad art! Free stuff that's rubbish! Over-promotion! And, tomorrow, in The Observer, Kylie Minogue!
Still chuckling.
I want to see Jonathan Ross everywhere. I want him to be featured in an eight-hour show every week where he burns licence-payers money, and makes loud suits out of children's skin.
The ridiculous over-reaction of the Daily Mail has made me want an equally disproportionate response.
The fact that Ross is a bit of a dick sometimes is so outweighed by my hatred for the Mail that I've come to venerate him as some kind of messianic figure.
He's the lesser of two evils. So much the lesser, that I'm happy to see his stupid face on the front of every newspaper in the country. If it causes even one Daily Mail reader to die of a rage-induced stroke, it will have been worth it.
Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't write comments on a Monday morning. I'm not at my most chipper.
It's for knuckles, isn't it? It's wrap across the knuckles.
Anna
Interesting. We can infer what Collins thinks about this by closely reading the way he's framed what is essentially a series of pointed questions...
For my part:
a.) I don't think Ross should even have been suspended. The fact that stuff was aired wasn't his fault.
b.) The Xmas wrapping paper is of no use or interest to anybody.
c.) The Guardian and The Observer (in their current form and with their current crop of mostly rubbish writers) have fallen out of favour round my house, so I take the slightly-too-right-wing Rupert Murdoch vehicle The Times instead.
No stupid promotional rubbish. No headlines stating 'the best band you've never heard' (when you probably have heard them) or '50 things to do over christmas because we can't be bothered to write an article'. No infuriating double standards...
The Guardian is only good for a quick crossword or sudoku, as far as I can tell. Apart from that and Hadley Freeman, G2 is unreadable.
I think this is a really insane gesture by The Guardian but it would be even more out there for someone to actually take this wrapping paper and use it for the purpose of wrapping a present... ...so much potential comedy in the thought process you would have to go through!
Could this be the nadir of the 21st century?
Here's what I think Swineshead (and bear in mind my views will always be coloured by the fact that I have met Ross and Brand on a number of occasions and they were perfectly pleasant - indeed, Ross went out of his way to say hello to me earlier in the year and it was not for showbiz effect, as I do not score many points in a showbiz situation):
I think what Ross and Brand did was stupid and not very funny (the second being subjective); in the heat of the moment on live radio, I'd have forgiven them. I think it was stupid to put it out on the radio, and for that we can't blame Ross and Brand.
I'm not sure suspension is a punishment anyway - it's a gesture from the BBC that they won't tolerate what was still puerile and potentially offensive to Sachs, even if it had never been on the radio. However, the fuss made and the over-reaction by the BBC Trust means that when Ross returns, he will not be himself. This seems a shame, whether you like what he does or not. He is a popular figure among many.
I think his sexually aggressive interviewing technique with the ladies has gone on for too long, and is a result of the heady sense of power endemic in making lots of people laugh when you say a swear word or suggest you want to have sex with a lady who isn't your wife. Nobody was going to step in and ask him to tone it down while the studio audience erupted into laughter every time he did it, and the figures for his show were good. Had Gwyneth Paltrow lodged a formal complaint, or walked off the set, this might have happened sooner.
Unfortunately for Ross, the mistake he made on Sachs' phone went public in a big way, due to the Daily Mail and other newspapers with a vested interest, and thus, he is being publicly humiliated for all the other things he does that certain people don't approve of. I don't approve of all of his tricks, but I don't think he should be erased from public life.
I'm still not sure what the Guardian are playing at. Not with the wrapping paper - I understand that, it's tied in with putting celebrities' faces on the front of their paper with an "artistic" justification - but the choice of Ross. I'm sure it was arranged months ago - I don't think Ross sat in Hampstead drawing some radios and TVs on a piece of paper. If he did, we may view it as a cry for help!
I'd gone off Ross a while back I just found him tedious. I think all this hate the Daily Mail things is nonsense sure they have their own agenda against the BBC but JR and brand were still wrong.
In general I'd be happy not see him back on tv or radio and give some other people a chance. As for the whole doing stuff for charity contrite act I don' think JR can carry that off having spent his entire carreer awash in post-modern irony he can't suddenly do sincere because well he's never meaat anything he's said on air before so why should we believe him now.
I wonder if the Mail will counter with wrapping paper designed by Georgina Baillie...?
They could have a decoration tag team face-off to settle the whole silly affair. Sachs lobbing baubles at Brand and ol' Russ responding with a tinsel strangulation technique.
If somebody gave me a present wrapped in newspaper, I'd punch them.
Danny Baker and Zoe Ball are making a decent fist of the 10 til 1 Saturday slot on Radio 2. I think that Ross had done that, in the same format, for too long anyway. A longer tenure for Baker and Ball would be welcome.
The word verification I have to type in to get this published is 'rhole'. Have any other readers encountered borderline swearwords as word verification? Should the Daily Mail be informed? Will Andrew Collins have to resign from his no doubt lucrative stand in roles at the BBC?
The moment that Sachs' "innocent" grand-daughter appeared on the front page of Zoo magazine (or whichever one of them it was) I lost the very last thread of compassion for her or the whole situation. What a load of toss over nothing - fine, it was puerile, but any Daily Mail reader who says it was "wrong" because it wasn't funny is clearly a moronic cretin - if we cancelled everything on telly that I didn't find funny, the schedules would certainly be a lot lighter.
Bring back Ross, and Brand while we're at it. Ross might be a bit sexist and occassioanlly swear (though to be honest he wouldn't be in my Top 10 TV swearers - I can't really remember him swearing much at all??) but his guests go on expecting that, they all know who he is and if they don't like it then don't go on. I'm sure they're being quite handsomely paid for the experience.
Is Danny Baker doing the Saturday Morning slot on Radio 2? (I'm an Adam and Joe man myself). That is funny. He was saying on his Radio 5 show when all this was kicking off that he had phoned Jonathon Ross asking to be told if he was going to fall on his sword so he could dust off his CV....
I excitedly rifled through the Guardian this morning, only discover that the promised 'wrapping paper' was actually just a bit of old newspaper. Who'd have the gall to wrap someone's present in newspaper, even in these financially-challenged times? A cheap bastard, that's who.
Not for the first time I'm kind of with BLTP on some of this.
While JR may display contrition, I don't see any indication of that being his natural modus operandi. I'd like to think that any clear thinking forty-something bloke who left messages like that would realise in the cool light of day that he'd gone too far and would have phoned up the recipient the next day to explain and apologise. JR seems only to have done this after the story broke (over a week later) and he was put under a lot of pressure.
Maybe that's what the post-modern, neo-family man does to set a good example to his kids.
(On the question of JR's paper design being a possible "cry for help" , I'm reminded of The Smiths; to paraphrase "Frankly I'd feel more fulfilled, making Christmas wrapping paper, with the mentally ill")
I think every entertainment personality is just that - a personality, a person, an individual - and they would all be as bland as hell if they were all some sort of BBC stereotype robot, and they never said or did anything different, cheeky, funny, teasing, or rude.
Walking into a Mumbai hotel and gunning down every live human in sight, is offensive. Pinning a woman against a wall is sexually aggressive. Giggling like idiots is just giggling like idiots - ie the only one who looks like an idiot is them, so why couldn't it have just been left at that?
Bring back Ross and Brand - definitely, we loved them just the way they were - imperfect, cheeky and fun. Yes they have a great job, but they do it FOR US - working very hard to find new ways to make us laugh. Which is more than the city gamblers do with their millions.
Rant rant etc.!! ;-)
Why is discussion of this subject always about the Daily Mail? The Daily Mail broke the story, that's all. Some journalists did their job for a change. After that, it was driven by other media, chiefly the BBC. I didn't read a word of the Mail's coverage, yet knew every cough and spit of the story and I'm sure that's true of most people visiting this blog. And anyway, just because it's a Mail story doesn't automatically make it wrong. Even a stopped clock and all that..
There's only one thing more pointless in the Guardian than their annual so-called Christmas "wrapping paper" ("Happy Christmas Dad - I've bought you some cod and chips!") and that's Zoe Williams. Oh and Polly Vernon.
Probably because the Daily Mail have come out of this with less dignity than anyone, but their readers don’t care; the Mail (Dacre) knows exactly what they are doing.
The reason everyone is pissed off with the Mail is they can write what the hell they like, even if it is obvious lies and get away with it!
On Saturday they featured an article by Laura Topham with Sachs and his wife. In the opening paragraphs there was an obvious lie:
“Worse for Melody was the discovery of the content of these messages: first, Russell Brand lewdly revealed a sexual encounter with her eldest grandchild Georgina.
It is old news that Ross blurted this out – the Daily Mail were pretty much the first to point this out!
Then:
“Soon, a torrent of pornographic images and videos of the 23-year-old appeared in the downmarket press”
Just look at the page these quotes were taken from!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1090350/Mrs-Sachs-bites-Ross-sacked-Brands-apology-insult.html
Then have a search around, the only explicit pictures I have seen of the woman are when I have read my parents Daily Mail.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081414/Georgina-Baillie-Im-thrilled-Brand-Ross-suspended-way-treated-grandfather.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081722/Georgina-Baillie-Russell-Brand-obsessed-Fawlty-Towers-grandfather-bed.html
Today they are having a go a Rhod Gilbert for a joke he has been doing for years. I was at a show when he was trying it out and have seen it since – it is essentially a joke about having a dog for a brother and calling him Patch – it is almost twee – but to the Mail it is a sick joke about bestiality. It is only because he works for the BBC that they give a damn.
Can’t you see what is wrong with the Mail’s coverage at all?
I don't read it, Chris. That's my point.
Yes but you did say:
"Why is discussion of this subject always about the Daily Mail? The Daily Mail broke the story, that's all."
I was trying to answer that point -the Mails double standards and all that - but after a couple of beers it did turn in to a bit of a rant :S.
The only way the Daily Mail reading public is truly going to forgive JR for his disgraceful bullying is if he donates all his future salary to the BNP and agrees to have his mouth sewn shut live on his Friday night show.
I sure any sane thinking individual would agree it is the only sensible thing to do.
It would be great if JR came back and told the BBC they can stick their job where the sun don't shine, however there are 18 million reasons he wouldn't.
Who would use free wrapping paper from The Guardian? Erm, me!
Although to be fair to me - and I'm not saying I necessarily deserve fair treatment for being so lazy - last year they used proper glossy paper and they were designed by celebrity artists rather than celebrity celebrities.
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