The BBC forced us to stare into the abyss.
You can imagine the consternation when bedside radios across the land clicked on last Tuesday morning and the nation discovered that the ethnics had taken over the BBC’s flagship Today programme.
You can imagine the consternation when bedside radios across the land clicked on last Tuesday morning and the nation discovered that the ethnics had taken over the BBC’s flagship Today programme.
For some
minutes a state of confusion and bewilderment must have reigned.
I know they
have that nice darkee with the deep bass voice to do some in-between stuff and
make announcements but really.... You can go too far with these things.
When
reporting on other parts of the globe, the dear old Beeb have taken to letting
‘relevant foreigners’ present the information. It’s ever such fun and all to
the good. Adds to the colour (if you get my drift) but certainly we expect to
be catapulted back pretty quickly to those nice superior, white, slightly (deservedly)
smug types who sooth us each day with a sense of the world being in the right
place. The ‘right place’ being somewhere in the 1970s. We all know what a
golden time that was for the BBC.
How would we
cope, for example, without young John Humphries? I recall with fondness his
interview with those people they call Royal Commentators (when the delectable
Kate was due to be hitched to the one that definitely belongs to Charles). How
they all did chortle at the multiple racist faux pas of our dear Duke as they
discussed the role of a royal consort.
My favourite
was an episode of Gardener’s Question Time a couple of years back when the panel
were tickled by a hilarious comment about a certain plant reminding a woman of
a black man’s willy. How droll. Actually more like the 50s than the 70s.
If not for
the London-centric, upper class, elitist whiteness then what oh WHAT, we must ask
ourselves, is the licence fee paying for? Indeed, are taxes of all kinds not in
place to ensure that the comfortably off and the establishment can rely on
their institutions doing what they want and being peopled by folk – well – like
them. Surely alternatives leave us staring over the
abyss, in danger of slipping into the void.
That is how
it felt last Tuesday when the BBC did the ethnic ambush.‘Wogs’ was the term at junior school then at secondary school it was‘coons’. How fashions
change.
As I
listened to Lenny Henry I felt the ground beneath me shifting (or rather the
mattress). It was only after proper logical cogitation I realised all was well.
For a start
off it was Tuesday 30th December. Listening figures would be down. The
poor overworked dears at the BBC needed a rest. What better time to let the jolly
ethnics have a go.
I recall
once my daughter’s junior school letting chosen, trusted youngsters answer the
school phone at lunch break. Few important calls came in at that time and it
meant that the teachers could get their meals undisturbed.
It became
clear that the experiment was just a little Christmas treat for the brown
colonials - don’t they speak good English – well done.
Oh how I did
chortle at my own silliness.
But before
you knew it the darkies were back in their box.
It was all
rather amusing. I do hope they do it again next year.
Good show
the BBC.
*
You may be aware (blog 53. I suffer from P.A.N.T.S) that I am a relative luddite so if you like
this blog and you are a young, plugged in, ‘withit’ person, do please feel free
to “splash it all over” as Henry Cooper would have said...
Cheers
Amanda