Bbc

Friday

Melanie McDonagh

The BBC debate confirmed some unhelpful female stereotypes

If I were a nicer person, I suppose I’d have been rather more moved by what the Independent called the moment that summed up last night’s leaders debate, the ‘beautiful group hug’ by the three women leaders at the end while Ed Miliband looked on.  Rather, it summed up for me what I felt about the entire event, that it was a slightly embarrassing affair for women whose approach to politics is anything other than the sort of thing espoused by Greece’s radical left-wing party Syriza. If you take seriously the notion that the deficit is something to be addressed rather than put on hold, that the national debt is something to be talked

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Farage, the debate audience wasn’t left-wing but it was affected by groupthink

The BBC opposition leaders’ debate wasn’t great political theatre, but it did turn into a fascinating experiment in human behaviour. A third of the way through, Nigel Farage suddenly imploded, attacking the BBC for putting together a left-wing audience – which he then went onto to insult and dismiss as an irrelevance, the real audience being at home. On this occasion, Farage was almost certainly wrong about BBC bias. I am sure that David Dimbleby was telling the truth when he said that the audience had been put together by a polling company to reflect the balance of voting intentions. And yet Farage was right to detect that the audience,

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

Listen: The Spectator’s verdict on the opposition leaders’ TV debate

Ed Miliband managed to surpass expectations in tonight’s opposition leaders’ debate. In this View from 22 podcast special, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the final televised debate with the party leaders — minus David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Did Nigel Farage target  his core base once again? How successfully did Nicola Sturgeon deal with Ed Miliband’s attacks? And did Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood manage to have their voices heard? You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer every week, or you can use the player below:

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ed Miliband’s gamble paid off but the Scottish question still haunts him

Ed Miliband took a risk by turning up to this debate and until the last question it looked like it had definitely paid off. Miliband avoided conceding too much to the anti-austerity alliance to his left of Nicola Sturgeon, Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood and parried Nigel Farage’s attacks on Labour pretty effectively. On Trident, he sounded statesmanlike as he explained why in an uncertain world, Britain needed to renew its nuclear deterrent. All the while, he got in regular attacks on David Cameron both for his record in government and not being at the debate. But the last question was about hung parliaments and it is this which caused

Sebastian Payne

Campaign kick-off: 21 days to go

Now that all the manifestos are in the public domain, we are back onto more conventional campaign territory. The big event of today is at 8pm this evening, when the ‘opposition leaders’ will debate each other on the BBC in the final televised debate before polling day. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Here come the insurgents Tonight’s TV debate represents an opportunity for the smaller political parties to give Ed Miliband a good kicking. Nicola Sturgeon, Nigel Farage, Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood will all relish the chance to turn on Miliband — the

Kate Chisholm

I, Bette Davis

It was called Frankly Speaking and by golly it was. The great screen actress Bette Davis was being interviewed by not one but two men: George Coulouris, with whom she co-starred in Hollywood, and a BBC producer. ‘It’s a little sad for some of us who adore your work that a lot of your best performances have been in fairly trivial films,’ said the producer, Peter Duval-Smith, as if to tempt Davis into dishing the dirt on the directors who made her what she became. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Davis replied, not a woman to be tricked into anything. ‘Who do you think made you a star?’

Tuesday

Steerpike

Jeremy Clarkson causes more problems for the BBC

The BBC appeared to have put an end to their Jeremy Clarkson woes when they made the decision not to renew his contract following a ‘fracas’ between the Top Gear presenter and a show producer. Despite this, the Clarkson saga continues to cast a shadow on the corporation. The presenter’s untimely departure has meant that the producers of the BBC mockumentary W1A have had to re-edit a series plotline. Hugh Bonneville, who plays the BBC’s head of values in the series which airs next week, admits that they had to ‘tweak the voice-over’ to keep up with events. A plotline written before the incident saw Clarkson get the BBC in trouble by writing an

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

Keeping the faith | 9 April 2015

There was no shortage of Easter music and talks across the BBC networks with a sunrise service on Radio 4 followed by much fuss and fanfare for the ‘live’ relay of Libby Lane’s first Easter sermon as Bishop. A significant milestone for the C of E as women are at last allowed to don mitres and wield a bishop’s crozier. Three, not to be outdone, invited the Revd Lucy Winkett (who had to outride the brouhaha caused by her appointment as the first woman priest at St Paul’s Cathedral) on to Private Passions, where she proved herself an insightful musician and theologian. Her impassioned explanation of the Easter message, the

James Walton

Comics’ trip

Who says British television lacks imagination? You might have thought, for example, that every possible combination of comedian and travel programme had been exhausted long ago. After all, it’s now 26 years since Michael Palin set the trend by following in Phileas Fogg’s footsteps (sort of). In more recent times, we’ve had Stephen Fry going round America in a London taxi, Billy Connolly going round Australia on a Harley-Davidson trike and — perhaps drawing the short straw — Ade Edmondson going round Britain in a caravan. There’s also been Paul Merton in India, Sue Perkins in China, Sean Lock and Jon Richardson in the Deep South and… well, you get

Wednesday

Brendan O’Neill

Trans activists are effectively experimenting on children. Could there be anything more cruel?

Can you think of anything more cruel than telling a five-year-old boy who likes Lady Gaga that he might have gender dysphoria? Or telling a nine-year-old tomboy who hates Barbie and loves Beckham that she might really be male – in spirit – and therefore she should think about putting off puberty and possibly transitioning to her ‘correct gender’? Saying such things to kids who are only doing what kids have done for generations – messing about, discovering their identity – turns playfulness into a pathology. It convinces boys who aren’t boyish and girls who aren’t girly that they must have some great gender problem, a profound inner turmoil that

Steerpike Steerpike

Is Ed Balls running scared from debating George Osborne?

When Ed Balls appeared alongside George Osborne on the Andrew Marr Show earlier this year, the Shadow Chancellor told viewers how much he wanted to have a TV debate with the Chancellor. Balls was so keen that he made Osborne shake on a debate live on air. ‘In fact I’d like to go further,’ he cried. ‘George and I do not need the broadcasters to sort things out. George is not a coward.’ Indeed Osborne is not a coward, but could it be that Balls is a chicken? Mr S only asks as word reaches him that plans for a Chancellors’ debate this week have been shelved after Balls demanded

Tuesday

Steerpike

Journalists jeered for asking Tony Blair questions at Labour press conference

Labour have continued their bizarre war on the media with aplomb. As Mr S has reported in the past, pesky journalists that have the audacity to ask awkward questions are given the full hairdryer treatment from the audience at Labour’s set piece events. Today’s speech by Tony Blair was no different: This Tony Blair event very nostalgic. A member of the audience even called me “Tory scum” for asking a question. — James Landale (@BBCJLandale) April 7, 2015 Modern trait of crowd booing journalists who ask the most relevant questions. Expect more of it to come. #Blair — Chris Gibson (@ChrisGibsonNews) April 7, 2015 All stirred up by the party’s

Thursday

James Delingpole

Why James Delingpole is addicted to Pointless

Ever since Boy got back from school my work schedule has fallen to pieces. Every few minutes, just when I’ve got my concentration back after the last interruption, Boy will burst into the office and say, ‘Dad, Dad. How good are you on obscure New Zealanders?’ Or, ‘Quick, Dad, it’s your subject: reptiles!’ Or, ‘Dad, this is ridiculous. Only four people recognised Johnny Marr.’ And so on and on it goes. If I were a stricter parent or a more self-disciplined worker, I wouldn’t let this happen. Problem is, the programme we’re talking about here is Pointless (BBC1, Mondays) and I’m afraid I’m just as addicted as Boy is. Helpless,

Peter Phillips

Our hero worship of Bach is to blame for rubbish like ‘Written By Mrs Bach’

My impression that Bach has come to rival Shakespeare as a flawless reference point in the cultural life of the nation has recently received some further corroboration. Remember the fuss that some academics, in the hope of recognition, created around the authorship of the bard’s works and where it got them? I don’t know how far the non-specialist public has been swayed by the BBC4 television programme entitled Written By Mrs Bach, but the Earl of Oxford came to mind as I watched it. The claims in the programme are so obviously rubbish that I would have thought the average film company might have thought twice about filming it, let

Thursday

Taki

Make no mistake: the Top Gear brouhaha is cultural warfare

It’s a famous quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald, one that Elton John should ponder (when he’s not out shopping, that is): ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.’ Mind you, Elton John is a hysterical, spoilt, ugly fat man who thinks his opinions count. (Perhaps they do with non-talents such as Liz Hurley and Victoria Beckham.) I now know who Dolce & Gabbana are because of the row over children conceived by IVF and surrogacy, and they seem like nice billionaires, except they threw in the towel right away

Molly Guinness

Jeffrey Bernard and Jeremy Clarkson would have understood each other

A lot of people seem to have confused the fact that Jeremy Clarkson is right wing and amusing (which they believe is at odds with the culture of the BBC) with the fact that he’s shown himself to be a brute (which is why he’s been sacked). The investigation into his attack on Oisin Tymon is pretty unequivocal. It was unprovoked and lasted more than 30 seconds until someone else intervened, and there was a lot of nasty verbal abuse thrown in for good measure. Tymon went to hospital afterwards to get his injuries checked out. Rather magnificently, he didn’t offer any resistance to Clarkson’s assault. The Duke of Cambridge

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

How Ukip became the incredible disappearing party

The establishment drive to marginalise Ukip has been under way for three months now, and it has having its effect. You will not read anything about Ukip in your newspapers unless it is a negative story — some half-witted candidate’s office fraudulently claiming expenses, or a disappointed member explaining that they’re all vile people and so on. The papers have, by and large, cottoned on to the fact that Nigel Farage saying something a little gamey about race is not, actually, a negative story. Whenever the Ukip leader mused in moderate terms that he found it uncomfortable to sit on a train where he was the only person speaking English,

Wednesday

Rod Liddle

The real reason Jeremy Clarkson’s gone? The BBC loathed his politics

I still don’t know which way John Humphrys votes and I’ve been a friend of the chap for more than a quarter of a century. Hell, we’ve been on holiday together, twice. I have very few friends in mediaville, but John is certainly one, and the oldest friend within that milieu, at that. But I still couldn’t tell you what way he votes. That fact alone might well signal to you that he tends to the Right; liberals are so unstintingly forthcoming about their fatuous opinions, so ready to declaim and shriek and disparage anyone who might dare gainsay them. But even then I wouldn’t be too sure. It’s probably

Steerpike Steerpike

Is Rupert Murdoch eyeing up Jeremy Clarkson now the ‘stupid’ BBC has fired him?

Last week Mr S reported how Jeremy Clarkson took to the stage at a charity event and called the BBC a bunch of ‘f—ing b—–ds’. He may well be uttering those words again today after Lord Hall released a statement saying that the BBC will not be requiring the Top Gear host’s services any more following Clarkson’s ‘fracas’ with one of the show producers. The BBC Director-General says that it is ‘with great regret’  that the corporation will not be keeping Clarkson on as a Top Gear host: ‘It is with great regret that I have told Jeremy Clarkson today that the BBC will not be renewing his contract. It is not a