More like this
Adlington jibe out of order in comedy crackdown
‘She looks like somebody looking at themselves in the back of a spoon’. Not funny, says BBC Trust
Comedians and comic writers anxious that the BBC's crackdown on "cruel and humiliating" comedy could put spoil satirical comedy appear to have good reason to be worried. The BBC Trust has issued its first ruling under the comedy crackdown and said there was no justification for the remark made on Mock the Week last year that the Olympic swimming champion Rebecca Adlington resembled "someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon".
The Trust's Editorial Standards Committee upheld a viewer's complaint, ruling that the comment made by Frankie Boyle and broadcast soon after Adlington won two golds in the pool at Beijing was both "humiliating" and "offensive".
"The thing that nobody really said about Rebecca Adlington is that she looks pretty weird," said Boyle. "She looks like someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon."
He then referred to Adlington's arrival back in Britain where she was met by her boyfriend. "Did you see her boyfriend?" Boyle asked. "He was really attractive. He was like a male model. So from that I have deduced that Rebecca Adlington is very dirty."
The BBC Trust ruling was welcomed by Adlington's agent, Rob Woodhouse, who said: "I am surprised this sort of thing is allowed to be said in a public environment, to be honest."
The crackdown on scenes of intimidation, humiliation or derogatory remarks was announced earlier this month in response to last year's 'Sachsgate' scandal, in which Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand made offensive prank phone calls to the former Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs about his granddaughter.
Richard Tait, chairman of the BBC Trust's Editorial Standards Committee, said yesterday: "The comments about Rebecca Adlington were humiliating, and this was exacerbated by the fact that she had not sought celebrity status or courted media attention. There was no clear editorial purpose for the inclusion of the joke." The second remark was unnecessary "sexual innuendo".
Comedians fear the new guidelines are too "politically correct". If they had been place in the past, many classic TV comedy scenes might never have been filmed - including some on Fawlty Towers itself. ·
Comments are now closed on this article
Comments
Did y'hear the one where people were allowed the right of free speech? Get a grip people the original statment was made months ago, well before the sachsgate controversy, and no one cared then!
Maybe I'm wrong though, maybe its caused huge moral decay in our society. Maybe there are teenagers kicking people to death in the streets, binge drinking and thirteen year old fathers all because someone cracked a joke last year!
Why didn't they just sack Ross and brand and let everyone else get on with being funny? Sure Frankie Boyle runs close to the edge sometimes, but where's the comedy if everyone sits in the middle of the road... unless of course there's the Pope racing down the white line on a snow plough singing Lili Marlene?
Did y'hear the one about the talentless Scottish pisshead who got a job at the BBC?