NOW THAT I OWN THE BBC [518]

I am compelled to support the British Broadcasting Corporation in what is either its most perilous moment, or only its latest predicament, because I lay as much a claim to owning a public corporation and cultural institution as any other member of the British public, and as one inspired and shaped by what it has broadcast.

At the time of writing, the President of the United States is expected to sue the BBC for an edit made to a speech made on 6^th January 2021, that was shown in an episode of “Panorama” just before the 2024 Presidential election – two sentences were linked together without making clear the gap in time between them, the resulting montage creating a more inflammatory statement than made at the time. The BBC apologised for the edit, promising the programme would not be shown again, but also made clear the programme had not been aired in the United States, that the edit did not intend to harm the President, nor did it ultimately harm them, and it was to be considered as twelve seconds of an hour-long piece. 

 

All this for whether a fade, or flash of white, could have been used to illustrate the passage of time – I don’t know when the latter became a device used on television, but I am sure that I saw it on the BBC first. My love of its comedy programmes and documentaries led to my being intrigued as much by how they were made, how they conveyed their message, as much as what that message was – it is why I write, why I have made videos, why I took a film studies degree, and why I visited BBC Television Centre in 2009.

 

The BBC has spent a century building a reputation as a trustworthy and impartial broadcaster by not just being as even-handed and thorough as humanly possible across its entire output – a good maxim to live by too – but by demonstrating that these are ideals that are worth striving for, proven by the high quality and reputation British broadcasting has across the world.

 

Unfortunately for the BBC, the apology to the President did not work. The “Panorama” episode had been raised in an internal document from an editorial oversight board, leaked to a newspaper, which then led to accusations of political bias in news reporting, ideological capture, complacency or ignorance of issues, and political interference in the governance of a public body. Both the Director-General and CEO of BBC News have resigned, just as the process of renewing the BBC’s Royal Charter begins, giving commentators in other media the chance to declare the BBC out of touch, in need of reform, or in need of destruction as an anachronism the country no longer needs. The irony that most of these commentators have appeared on the BBC at some point is not lost on me: “Two resignations won’t do. It has to be scorched earth at the BBC” is the title of a piece by Camilla Long of “The Sunday Times”, who has appeared on the primetime satirical comedy quiz “Have I Got News For You” nine times between 2013 and 2023.

 

I am clear that there will always be the need for a BBC, a national broadcaster where democracy of access and information is at its core of its foundation. I once put the BBC alongside the NHS, Penguin Books and free art galleries as institutions that make up my idea of what the United Kingdom is, and should continue to be, alongside queuing and complaining about the weather. I should have included Channel 4 in that list: the UK’s other publicly owned public service broadcaster, it has been threatened with privatisation many times, most recently in 2022-23, each time halted over how it would damage the distinctive, innovative and experimental output it is mandated to have, and the larger independent TV production sector from there.

 

That said, I don’t know how much the BBC should be doing to cater to everyone, or how the money for that should be provided. Any reduction or selling-off of parts of the BBC will need to be weighted against any effect it may have on the creative economy of the UK, and the reflection of the UK’s cultures and values across the world – the existence of the BBC helped make either of those considerations possible in the first place. 

 

An expectation that we should all pay in some way towards public broadcasting will continue for as long as people believe in its universal benefit as an aid to democracy, a way of preventing anyone from being left behind in the information age. Anyone that doesn’t have a reason to believe that should find one.

 

This is only what I think, but everybody has something that would make them dread for the future of their country if it were to disappear, and mine has touched every part of my life.

CLIMB INSIDE A DOG, AND BEHEAD AN ESKIMO [164]

Later than you always should, you realise how responsible your parents are for the person you become. My dad’s renting a collection of “The Goon Show,” on cassette from the local library, sent me down a surreal road through British comedy, and I remember watching an episode of “Have I Got News for You” with my parents in 1993, when Roy Hattersley failed to appear, and was replaced with a tub of lard. However, I had finished watching the first episode of “The Smell of Reeves & Mortimer,” in 1994, thinking, “well, I don’t know what that was about.

After coming across episodes of the satirical puppet sketch show “Spitting Image” online, I remembered my parents taping this show, at 10pm on a Sunday night, for me to watch after school the following day. This first episode I saw turned out to be the first of the eleventh series, broadcast on 10^th November 1991 - I was eight years old at the time.

“Spitting Image,” which ran from 1984 to 1996 really was the right show at the right time. Its sculpted latex costumes, each requiring two people to operate, numerous sets and army of writers meant it costed more to produce than a drama series. However, its unexpected home, the major mainstream network ITV, could afford to provide a place, in prime-time, for proper Hogarth-like satire. ITV has tried to capture the magic since, with “2DTV” (hand-drawn animation), “Headcases” (3D animation) and “Newzoids” (3D-printed hand puppets with CGI mouth movement) coming off as ever paler in comparison, lacking the bite of the original’s scripts. Mind you, "Spitting Image" was also the programme that decided to parody bad holiday songs in 1986, but "The Chicken Song" sounded so authentic, it backfired itself to number 1 in the charts for three weeks. 

With 1991 seeing the end of both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, continued conflict across the Middle East, and infighting within the Conservative Party at home, there was much to take in, and spew out again – “Spitting Image” kept me informed in ways we now rely on people like John Oliver, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to continue for us.

Watching it back, the episode I remember is a great crystallisation of where we thought we were at that particular time, so no wonder it’s also been released on DVD.

Starting this series, joke news stories, not unlike those in “The Two Ronnies” and “Not the Nine O’Clock News,” were delivered by a new puppet of “News at Ten” anchor Trevor McDonald ordering the now-retired Alistair Burnet out of his chair, having taken over the bulletin in real life. One sample line: “The newspaper world is reeling from the news that the millionaire publisher Rupert Murdoch is alive and well.”

John Major, recast in grey rubber after becoming Prime Minister, and his wife Norma, eating peas with their dinner, was as much a tonal shift as the move from the show’s masculine, aggressive Margaret Thatcher could cause, the Punch and Judy atmosphere being retained in the show’s opening titles. Meanwhile, the Government is so anonymous, they forgot which one of themselves was Malcolm Rifkind – John Major distinguishes himself by deciding to be the boring, anonymous one.

Elsewhere, new Labour MP Glenda Jackson is doing a drama therapy workshop with the Labour Party; the Queen plays a prank on Prince Charles, playing dead to make him think he has become King (“I always fall for that one”); and a reminder that anything crap becomes brilliant with a piece of lime stuck in it, like “Mex” lager, a used car, Jeffery Archer’s latest novel, London’s Docklands and, finally, “Spitting Image” itself. The “yeeeesss” of Jeremy Paxman is a big memory, and I now know the puppet’s voice was done by, at this point in time, Steve Coogan. There was also a line, from Chancellor Norman Lamont, where, “if you repeat something often enough, people will believe it,” repeated until John Major agrees with it – that sounds like a certain US president on Twitter to me.

Oh, and everywhere is now a legitimate Israeli settlement.

Also, Arnold Schwarzenegger sang a lament about how small his penis was in comparison to the rest of his body.

I definitely understood satire, “Spitting Image” and “Have I Got News for You,” before the more surrealist kind of comedy. At eleven years old, I was allowed to stay up until 10.30pm, and had “Shooting Stars,” “The Day Today,” Alan Partridge, “Brass Eye” and “The Fast Show” ahead of me.

British TV wasn’t half bad in the 1990s.