SO far, Tim Davie, the new Director-General of the BBC, is making all the right noises. Despite howls of protest from three sixth-form proto-communists, he’s reinstated the words to Rule, Britannia! at next weekend’s Last Night Of The Proms gig. Then came the news that BBC presenters should not be allowed to do £20,000-a-time after-dinner […]
SO far, Tim Davie, the new Director-General of the BBC, is making all the right noises.
Despite howls of protest from three sixth-form proto-communists, he’s reinstated the words to Rule, Britannia! at next weekend’s Last Night Of The Proms gig.
Then came the news that BBC presenters should not be allowed to do £20,000-a-time after-dinner speaking engagements for big corporations.
“Quite right,” said everyone everywhere. They’re paid enough already.
But his most popular announcement so far has been this: Panel shows can no longer be made up entirely of people in BLM T-shirts reducing the audience to canned hysterics by saying: “Boris is a racist.”
Davie now wants people to make jokes about Keir Starmer’s Lego hair, which is probably why, yesterday, I got a call from a producer at Have I Got News For You, asking if I was free to host the show next month.
I can’t, unfortunately, I’m busy making merry with Hammond and May.
The trouble is that next week, poor old Tim’s got to stop his populist tub- thumping and start addressing the real problem with the BBC.
The fact that everyone under the age of 200 is forced to pay for something they hardly ever watch.
Oh sure, they’ve tried to make it “yoof” friendly by putting stuff on “apps” and speaking “street” but what’s the point of being down with the kids when the entire audience is sitting in a Shackletons wingback, wondering whether Werther’s Original tasted better in the War?
“Yo” is not a form of greeting they recognise.
Here’s what I’d do if I was in his shoes. Sell Radios 1, 2 and 3 and 5 immediately.
That’d bring in a chunk of change. Then save a fortune by closing down all local radio.
Next, I’d completely abandon scheduled television.
At present, the Beeb is paying to make shows that go out at three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and four o’clock on a Sunday morning. Why?
Nobody watches TV like that any more. We decide what we’d like to see and then we stab away on our 43 different remotes until we find it.
Instead, I’d merge all the Beeb television channels with Channel 4 and make only high-quality shows which are put straight on to the surprisingly good and clever iPlayer.
The BBC would then become the UK’s equivalent of Amazon and Netflix.
Would we still pay for that through a licence fee?
Well, if it was significantly less than we pay now — and without afternoon TV and all that radio nonsense it would be — then I think the answer is yes.
GOOD news.
It’s been discovered by an eminent team of researchers at the prestigious Yale University in the US that cycle lanes give off toxic chemicals when they are exposed to sunshine.
This will wreck every city’s plans to cut emissions and will force many to abandon cycle lanes immediately.
A MAN recently travelled the world stopping in towns on every continent and noting down what the first 100 people he saw were wearing on their legs.
Hey, it’s a job. And it produced this astonishingly accurate result: It’s not just me who wears jeans every day.
There are 3.5billion people who do the same thing. That’s half the world’s population.
With jeans, you know what size you want so you don’t have to waste time in an overheated, diseased-filled changing cubicle.
You can spill stuff on jeans and it never really shows. The pair I’m wearing now are spattered with gravy, egg, chicken s**t, mud, sump oil, Humbrol paint, creosote, grease and a burst trout (don’t ask).
But I could wear them tonight in a fancy restaurant and no one would notice.
Invented for miners in the 1800s, they are now worn by rock stars like Bruce Springsteen, actors including Michelle Keegan, cowboys, gardeners, fishermen.
Everyone except the Queen, in fact, who, in her entire life, has only been seen wearing trousers eight times.
But now comes news that when you wash a pair of jeans, up to 60,000 tiny microfibres escape into the water system.
These are now washing up in the Arctic and naturally, Friends Of The Earth is very worried about all this, er, cotton.
It says that while washing machine filters can help, prevention is the best cure.
So let me get this straight? The charity is saying that to solve the problem of natural fibres leaking into nature, half the world’s population should go to work tomorrow with nothing below their waist but a pair of pants?
EARLIER this week, the seemingly harmless BBC show Pointless reminded me that I’m now 4million years older than everyone else in the country.
Much to my surprise, one contestant was very unsure of what unit of length, that began with the letter Y, is equal to 3ft.
And then, later, another was similarly confused by what small unit of length, beginning with the letter I, is equivalent to 2.54 centimetres.
These people weren’t stupid. But they were MUCH younger than me.
A point that was made again later in the show, when all the dates were given as either “CE” or “BCE”.
Apparently, it stands for “common era” or “before common era” and is intended to make those who don’t believe in the baby Jesus feel more comfortable.
Well I don’t believe in him, but it didn’t make me feel comfortable.
Probably because I was born in 1960 AD.
THE owners of an Airbnb cottage have been barred from the site after banning guests who weigh more than 100kg.
Which in English is 15st 10lb.
They were accused by enormous people on social media of being fatphobic, and the right-on bosses at Airbnb agreed, saying their mission is to create a “world where everyone can belong anywhere”.
Oh good. Well I’ll have two nights at Buckingham Palace then.
The fact is, though, I weigh more than 100kg and I can quite under-stand why someone wouldn’t want a larda**e like me in their house, breaking all the furniture and causing the lavatories to fall off the wall.
YES the new electric Citroen Ami looks ridiculous and has a top speed of just 28mph.
But like the stupid, old 2CV, which looks even more ridiculous, the French are falling in love with it.
And I can see why.
It costs just £5,000. It can be driven by anyone over 14 so long as they have a moped licence.
And its range of 40 miles is plenty for people who live and work in the city.
Given the choice of this or a bicycle, this wins hands down.
INTERESTING news from the surgery.
Cases of sexually transmitted diseases are skyrocketing.
Syphilis is up. Chlamydia is up.
And gonorrhea is up by a whopping 26 per cent.
My, you’ve been having fun in lockdown.
Meanwhile, The Terence Higgins Trust has produced a handy cut out ’n’ keep guide for people who are horny during the pandemic.
They suggest self-pleasure and sending sexts, but say that if you must go for it, you should avoid kissing and make like the dog.
They reckon that despite the proximity, you should be OK if you wash your hands.
Hands?
MEN with significant beer bellies have been warned by researchers that they face a massively increased chance of developing prostate cancer and diabetes, and of dying if they catch the coronavirus.
Goodbye.
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