Time’s up for Ross at BBC, says Lawson

Jonathan Ross (pictured) faces an uphill battle when he returns to the nation's TV screens airwaves next week following his three-month suspension for leaving lewd messages on the answerphone of Andrew Sachs, the actor who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers. As reported here, a number of big movie stars, among them Daniel Craig and Kate Winslet, have already said they will not appear on his chat show, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, and now Mark Lawson, the eternally even-handed presenter of Radio 4's arts programme Front Row, has said that the presenter's career at the Beeb is pretty much finished.

"I think he has probably the biggest PR problem any TV person has ever had: the controversy doesn't revolve around one particular remark he made, but his whole act," Lawson told the Radio Times. "I don't see how he can win this. Anyone who's been through even a minor scare over matters of taste at the BBC knows it's pretty horrible... "

Adds Lawson: "I think Ross is going to find it pretty unbearable… so I think it will quite quickly suit both parties to find a way for him to leave the BBC."

One piece of good news for Ross: Tom Cruise, who previously sounded dubious about appearing on the show, has agreed to join Stephen Fry and comic Lee Evans on the first of the new series of Friday Night on January 23.

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