What We Want Is Dead Presenters

Perhaps it's the celtic temperament, but David Vance often reminds us of the great Sir Alex Ferguson: Red-faced, ranting and gifted with a blind spot the size of Scotland.

Plus he's brilliant at encouraging young talent. Here he is, warming up young Chris Hartnett for a go at posting on Biased BBC. Chris is taking the Vidic role, and today he's marking the West Stand's latest hate figure, Marcus Brigstocke:

Just back from a few days away to find that one Robin Ince has got a science/comedy programme series starting today. Robin is a sidekick of Ricky Gervais and had Dara O` Briain on as a guest.

Worth a listen. Thanks for the tip.

My problem is this-all three are militant atheists...

Militant? Are there weapons involved?

militant atheists who have appeared at various functions to mock Christmas amongst other things.

They tell Xmas-themed jokes, then.

This is not to say that they may not be funny...

That would be helpful in a comedy programme.

I don`t know...but can I assume that their atheism is a major link in them all getting commissions and the invitations on each others shows.

Almost certainly. There's a secret handshake they all do. Then they're quids in.

Wonder if, in the cause of "balance", we will now get a few Christians being able to appoint each other in an unthreatening and lucrative way?

God, no. Apart from Songs Of Praise, Thought For The Day, The Daily Worship, last year's glossy drama series about Jesus and lots more, Christians never get a look-in.

It seems to me that a Marcus Brigstocke would never get a platform to go on Question Time as a " comedian" if his brother was not something big at the Beeb

Disgraceful, if true. (Sadly, it's not. Dominic Brigstocke, if that's who you're thinking of, is a freelance director.)

Just feel that there is a rather creepy consensus going at by the BBCs commissioning types-same prep schools, same names and certainly same views on Europe,on "global warming" and on Christianity

It's Health And Safety gone mad. Plus being funny helps.

(but not too much said about Islam-cannot think why!)

Perhaps you missed Brigstocke's commentary on the Iranian elections? He had a go at that vicious little thug Ahmedinejad and his Islamo-freaky bosses.

Looking forward to the BBC doing a "Family Tree" type programme on who knows who from where-and who gets to "be funny" at the taxpayers expense!

They wouldn't dare: Oh, hang on...apart from the 50 episodes of Comedy Connections on BBC One.

P.S-Couldn`t help but notice that we recently celebrated the first anniversary of the Ross and Brand incident with Leonard Sachs...surely this was an "iconic" moment on which contemporary BBC protocols and procedures were forged in the white heat of controversy and drame

Dyno-rod? Got a problem with our drames. When can you get here?

-why then no programme to mark those tremendous events of late Oct/Nov last year?

Great idea: Let's demand a whole week of shows across all channels and all media. ITV are planning a month of programmes on the anniversary of their premium-phone-line-voting embarrassments, I'm sure.

I`m sure Paxman and Wheeler were by the wall in Lime Grove with fireworks so there MUST be some archive filmstock left...

Now that I'd pay to see. Charles Wheeler had been dead five months by the time Sachsgate happened. What was Paxman thinking of?

Update: Chris is given another post this morning to make himself clear, though his name changed mysteriously from Hartnett to Bartlett. And then back again:

Paxman could not be found anywhere near the revolutions of 89-none of them!...but still the archive film shows him shouting at Charles Wheeler when the firework display was an-old Reagans bit at the wall previously was left on the shelf,due to lack of time and never "editorial bias".

Glad you cleared that up. And a big thanks to David Vance for boosting young talent, irrespective of its ability to make sense. Or the variability of its surname. God Bless your noble heart, sir.

Leave It, Dave. They Just Ain't Wurf It.

Fresh from helping to foment a redneck rebellion on his Irish blog, Biased BBC's head honcho David Vance turns his omniscient gaze to dramatic criticism this morning. It's a rich seam.

Bias is a curious beast.

Isn't it just?

I don't watch Eastenders

Surely you must have a microsecond or two between bursts of spray-painting the internet with your every thought? Then again, maybe not…

but I believe that London Mayor Boris Johnson made a cameo appearance in "The Vic".

Who, pray, are these soi-disant EastEnders?

Big deal, eh?

If you say so.

Well, it bothers the BBC who ran an item on it this morning...

Orders from central command c.c. Sir Michael Lyons & Ben Bradshaw: All outlets must mention EastEnders/Boris. Typical!

…pointing out that a/ Their hero Red Ken never got on despite seeking appearances,

Typical pro-Tory bias. (Can that be right?)

b/ That Boris was "a national joke"

Are you sure that that was The BBC's opinion?

and c/ Is this how we are going to treat "our coming Tory masters"?

A serious admission from the save-Gordon-at-any-cost Beeboids, surely?

d/ It was all simply too awful.

Well, it was EastEnders.

Let's re-wind: The BBC, which makes EastEnders, apparently turned down Ken Livingstone for a cameo in the Walford soap. You maintain that The BBC is upset that Their hero Red Ken never got on the show.

So The BBC is complaining that The BBC did not allow Ken Livingstone to appear on The BBC's most popular programme, whilst The BBC allowed Boris Johnson to do so. Am having trouble working out who is the hero and who is the whinger in that scenario. Perhaps you can help?

And the critique of Boris's turn - and the joke about our Tory masters - came not from the BBC itself but from the TV critic of The Times, whose hands-on owners, the Murdochs, are vociferously opposed to the BBC's existence.

Outstanding. Give yourself a break. If you can.

Heaven: A Great Big Blacklist

When Biased BBC gets nostalgic, it's not for soppy stuff like old TV shows, vintage sports cars or 70s' fashion.

No, B-BBCers mist up over more muscular material - like McCarthyism. Tom wishes McCarthy was read rather than dead:

Yesterday evening on Radio 4 there was a discussion about the effects of HUAC and the Hollywood blacklist.

Are you now, or have you ever been, a Radio 4 listener?

Both of the guests (Michael Freedland and Corin Redgrave) were very much against the hearings and the resulting blacklist.

How odd. Doesn't everyone enjoy a good witch-hunt?

But instead of challenging them on this point, the presenter seemed to be in total agreement that Macarthyism was a terrible thing.

I'm sure you mis-heard.

How impartial is that?

They'll be taking sides on evolution next. And phlogiston. And the Flat Earth Theory. WTF?

I can think of a number of reasons to celebrate the blacklist.

I'll take over when you reach a hundred.

If, for instance, you think Hollywood is bad now, imagine how much worse it would be if it had been dominated by a self-perpetuating clique of stalinists for sixty years.

Shaun Of The Red? 24 Hour Communist Party People? Eternal Sunshine Of The Five-Year Plan?

You don't have to imagine.

You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

Just look at the BBC.

Only if Biased BBC tells me to. Otherwise sinful.

Funny how no-one ever mentions the blacklist against right-of-centre writers operated by the corp itself.

And the show-trials. Who can forget Huw Edwards: "I have here in my hand a list of 205 people who were known to the Director General to be supporters of the Conservative Party..."

GCooper, one of Biased BBC's legendary sages, names and shames the guilty people.

it is a point of fact that McCarthy, horrible though he may have been, actually did unearth and identify a significant number of Communists and Communist sympathisers at work in Hollywood.

Can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. With a chainsaw and a hand-grenade.

Sam Duncan wants a complete reappraisal of the Blacklist.

A number? As I understood it, according to the KGB files every one of the Hollywood blacklist was on its payroll.

And we are bound to take the KGB seriously on fact.

Even if that's not the case, there was clearly a huge Soviet propaganda operation underway in Hollywood.

Otherwise, how would Ronald Reagan have done so well. And Charlton Heston. And John Wayne. Chuck Norris, too. Oh, and Schwarzenegger.

But the BBC still calls the affair a “witch-hunt”, insinuating that it was all imaginary.

No, the witches were real.

I couldn't help wondering as I listened to that astonishing interview last night what would have happened to screenwriters in the Soviet Union who were found to be in the pay of the CIA.

Indeed. The Soviet Union being the moral equivalent of the United States. (Are we sure?)

Pedantic detail: The American Heritage Dictionary defines McCarthyism as "the practice of publicising accusations of political disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence" and "the use of unfair investigatory or accusatory methods in order to suppress opposition."

Losers.

Whites Can Not Be Villains

As if the BBC hasn't done enough damage to the national moral fibre, more evidence emerges of the atrocity that is New Tricks. It might look like a cop show remade by Werther's Originals, but it is unmitigated evil:

Ron writes: Did anyone see New Tricks last week?

About 7 million people, Ron.

Normally an excellent programme

Are you sure? Didn't Nearly Oxfordian have a few quibbles?

...but this episode presented illegal immigrants as saintly characters,

Banned by the Ofcom Code, surely! If not, it should be.

while the villain at the end turned out to be a white, middle-class, heterosexual Englishman.

Now that's taking the piss. Couldn't they at least have made him a homosexual?

Oh, hello. Here's Nearly Oxfordian again. How did you rate this week's show?

I think I'll stop watching this programme.

Can you be more specific?

The BBC: pathological anti-Americans, antisemites and bum-lickers for illegal immigrants from every vile Third World shithole.

That's a four-star review, then?

Shouting At Americans Is Wrong

In the charge-sheet of the BBC's offences against the British citizen, one moment of shame is darker than all others. We refer, of course, to the sheer poison the BBC drips into national life with every episode of New Tricks. It might look like one long Werther's Original advert - old codgers getting under the feet of shiny new people and coming up trumps every time to solve crime. But it is treachery. And Nearly Oxfordian can barely keep his emotions in check.

Can someone who knows how to do it start a thread about the vile New Tricks, please?

Your wish is our command.

This has become a dramatised version of the worst mouth-foaming...

Amanda Redman? James Bolam? Surely not?

the worst mouth-foaming anti-American, unlimited Third World immigration stuff we see in the Guardian:

Oh....The Guardian. It doesn't get much worse.

(1) an American legally living in the UK is shouted at

That can't be right. There's a law against it, surely.

.... by the vile Amanda Redman

Some men pay good money for that sort of thing.

But how distressing all the same. Perhaps she thought he was Canadian? Like Neil Young... or Leonard Cohen?

...and told he is "a guest in this country and should behave himself"

Now you're having me on. The whole point of being a guest in someone else's country is that you behave. Like British teenagers in Malia. And stag parties in Prague.

(2) illegal Turkish immigrants are tipped...

Golden rule. Never tip anyone serving you in a kebab shop. They regard it as an insult. It's their culture.

illegal Turkish immigrants are tipped offed by the police (!)

Is tipped offed a Turkish phrase? Never come across it myself.

...and helped to disappear from Home Office detection.

Not sure I want Turkish illegals serving as detectives. They might confuse me by using phrases like tipped offed.

Utterly sick.

Up there with Lars von Trier. For sure.

On the other hand, Lars doesn't get Denis Waterman to sing his theme tunes. Which is why his films are usually better.