BlackMan Time

Posts Tagged ‘bbc’

So the BBC gave the BNP a platform to perform? Why did they not invite a British black man on the panel? No disrespect to novelist Bonnie Greer but she’s American and although she’s black she cannot profess to have experienced Britain in the same way that most UK-born black people have. So why didn’t the BBC see it fit to redress this issue?

The programme, chaired by Sir David Dimbleby had the panellists Jack Straw, MP; Baroness Warsi, Conservative peer; Bonnie Greer, playwright and Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman.

Maybe it’s just me but I think a failure to even consider having a black male panellist is part of the overrall institutional racism that has befallen us over the years. The BBC by this omission is really saying they don’t feel there’s any black man in Britain capable of engaging an obnoxious racist fool like Griffin when the reality is quite different.

Even I would’ve been happy to appear. My focussed anger with the fact that I was opposed to him being given the opportunity in the first place, would’ve proven far more potent than Greer’s meandering, multi-syllable intellectual dead-ended responses, for instance.

In the end it was a freak show and the biggest freak had his day. Or is it just me, a black man freaking out…

Do you think it is illegal for a political party to exclude you from joining based on your colour, race, class, gender or sexual preference? You probably answer no, right? If you did then your view coincide with the opinions of other decent, law-abiding citizens.

It comes as a little two faced¹ surprise, therefore, that one so-called political party have been able to get one candidate elected to the European parliament and bagged itself an appearance on the BBC flagship Question Time political programme in the process. That guilty party is the British National Party, an ultra right wing, racist outfit that openly preaches race hate towards non-white members of the population.

How did they get elected? And why is the BBC giving about to give to give them airtime under the proviso of equality of opportunities to media interest on their channel?

Call me scenical but the BNP’s appearance on the BBC is happening because someone wants it to happen. Someone, maybe even a group, wants the BNP black race-hating filth and Enoch Powell-like scaremongering propaganda to reach a mass audience. Only the BBC alone knows why it would want that.

My only hope is that during the programme the BNP will fall down on its face and knock out all its stinking, rotten teeth. And gums.

That would make my day.

1. Image Credit: This painting, entitle “Two Faced” is by artist Joseph David Greenwood and shows Marcin Bondarowicz [↩]

With hindsight I feel I was too trigger happy to shoot down Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross for their part as comedians in the so-called Sachsgate affair.

It is right that comedians, entertainers, actors and artists can (and should) push the borders of popular taste as far to the edge as they can. It’s really up to the prevailing authorities to judge when such tastes in decency, for example, have been breached or compromised.

In the BBC’s case it failed to stop offensive material from being broadcast despite being advised and forewarned by one of the presenters, Jonathan Ross, about the possibility. The BBC chose to ignore this flag! Then it proceeded to act in a pompous way to suspend Brand and Ross only to save face.

The BBC is hypocritical and while it is a highly creative, respected corporation, it is very poor in enforcing its own standards. If such an august institution cannot maintain its own standards, then it is doomed to lose the right to claim tax payers’ money to fund its operation.

Actually, such a development may well be a very good thing…

British comedian Russell Brand used to be someone I admire mainly because he was unpredictable, creative and given time, I felt, would go right over the edge. Well, I gave him some time and he has just gone over the edge!

Phoning 78 year old Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs – who played Spanish waiter Manuel in the series – and leaving a nasty message saying he had made love to his granddaughter Georgina Baillie, on his BBC radio show hosted with Jonathan Ross, is reprehensible to say the very least.

To think he was joined by presenter Ross in the prank made it even worse. I have never really liked Ross who is a talentless, loudmouth who gets his kicks by attempting to humiliate guests on his so-called talk shows.

The BBC obviously thinks a whole lot about Ross since they pay him

It took a BBC documentary to make singer Jamelia realise she shouldn’t wear human hair extensions and weave-ins anymore.

Like thousands of other keen fashion-conscious women she believed extending her hair with strands of hair from unknown origins, usually taken from other humans, was just the best way to enhance her beauty.

Indeed as a schoolgirl she, like many other young Black teenage girls, used to rise early to ensure she had enough time to do her hair before getting to school. For these kinds of girls doing your hair is a ritual rivalling any religious practice. They do it because a woman’s hair is considered a key part of her beauty.

In the Black households having ‘good hair’ or hair that is straight and easy to comb, is not only a great benefit, it is also a cultural and social sign of status. The thinking goes back hundreds of years into the slave era when slave masters found they fetched better prices for female slaves who had straightened their hair.

Shun Bird’s Nest!

Jamelia

There’s a BBC radio marketing campaign currently running in British cinemas which irritates me no end. It features a variety of top on-air presenters talking about how the various genres of music they play really turn them on.

This is just my way of styling what they’re talking about but the idea is they’re enthusiastic about the varied types of music played on BBC radio.

Among the genres mentioned are Hip Hop, R & B, Jazz, Pop, Rock, Jungle, Garage and an ever expanding list ending with Dubstep. And this is where my irritation escalates because nowhere in the ad do they mention Reggae (or even Dancehall!) yet the BBC have in Ras Kwame and Chris Goldfinger two of the most prominent disk jockeys spinning those genre on and off air.

To worsen matters Goldfinger and Kwame are actually featured in the ad but do not even get to speak while loudmouth Tim Westwood, the Hip Hop representative, practically spreads his bed in the studio.

Once upon a time they used to make the excuse that Reggae is small time music from a small Caribbean island and there is small appeal in it. But what excuse can they have now, apart from deliberately marginalising the music?

They play, use and mention genres like Garage, Jungle, Hip Hop and even Dubstep, which are heavily influenced by Reggae straight from the beloved island of Jamaica, yet conveniently omits Reggae.

For me this is another example of how the BBC does not cater to minority interest; that they’re an elitist, white, upper middle class institution catering to the interest of that group.

I’d dare any enterprising BBC PR/Press Person contact me about this, but they’ll probably just refer to type and won’t even have read this blog entry!

The only problem with acting the court jester is you can never recover from it. The moment you start to act the fool to make other people laugh in their eyes you will always be the fool.

It doesn’t matter how many years have passed, during which time you will have matured, some people will still remember you only as that person who used to act the fool. The more you protest about how you’ve changed, is the more you will crack them up.

These were my thoughts when I heard that Ian Wright, former Arsenal football striker turn BBC TV pundit and personality, had quit the BBC because he was fed up having to act the fool in his role at the corporation.

“I was always the court jester adding a bit of fun to proceedings,” Wright said. “After Alan Hansen and Alan Shearer had done their bit, what's left to analyse?”

Strange Move

The former England and Arsenal striker said fans could not relate to the BBC’s other presenters or the out of touch way it covers football matches.

I actually agree with Wright but what strikes me as a little bit ’strange’ is the fact that the former England striker has been with the BBC for seven years yet chose only now to make these comments.

Could his timing have anything to do with the fact that he’s now moving over to Sky TV to present the new Gladiators?

Even if he is milking his departure for publicity Gladiators doesn’t strike me as being an opportunity where his expert advice and opinions would be best suited. And chances are he will probably have to, again, act like a fool to win viewers over.

This is what they will have come to expect from him. Either way he's onto a loser but I guess we’ll have to wait and see how he can spice things up without appearing like a fool!

I had to write down the names of all the people I wanted to thank for helping me in my life for a BBC-organised comedy course I attended earlier this year. The list was long and contained the names of people who were actually quite negative towards me at the time I knew them.

But I put them down because their negative vibe actually influenced me to rise above their negativity. However, their negativity wasn’t their uncanny effort to motivate me: it was because they were actually quite negative!

Now, I know a few people who were traumatised by being singled out for this kind of treatment. All I knew was that regardless of what some teacher or other person said about me I was always going to proceed in the direction I felt comfortable with, God wanted me to go or was in my plans to visit. I reasoned that since I wasn’t responsible for what other people said or thought about me, I was going to take control, as much as I could, about the direction of my life.

The only problem with this is that I didn’t know exactly where I wanted to go with my life, particularly immediately after finishing school! So I drifted for two years – well, actually I found work and that gave me a focus. Then I decided I was going to re-educate myself because I somehow felt I had been mis-educated at school!

I remember deliberately going out and buying a few key books, reading them on my own initiative and feeling a great sense of achievement because I had done that. In the process I discovered I liked photography so I enrolled on a full-time photography course, got a full maintenance grant and studied at a Yorkshire college for two years. It was a major turning point in my life because it introduced me to my future vocation: communicating with people on a grand scale!

I was taught to see photography as a way of communicating and to look at design as a way to solve problems. But as my interest and local notoriety in photography grew I realise I also liked film making and writing too! So, I added these elements as part of my communications tool.

For me, it seems, life gets really interesting when you make a conscious effort to do something and follow through with it regardless of the obstacles you may find. But I also still give thanks to those who have motivated me with their negativity!