The BBC is facing fresh scrutiny over anti-Tory bias after Boris Johnson and Liz Truss were subjected to a relentless barrage of highly personal attacks on primetime TV.
Comedy show Have I Got News For You was accused of broadcasting a torrent of ‘spiteful and crass insults’ as it dedicated Friday night’s episode to Mr Johnson.
In one shocking moment, host Jack Dee quoted a newspaper article that referred to the departing Prime Minister as a ‘cosmic ****’ – a moment greeted by gales of laughter in the studio. Panellists also suggested that Mr Johnson had taken cocaine.
BBC Director-General Tim Davie is set to be grilled over the slurs and other claims of impartiality when he faces MPs on the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee on Tuesday.
The satirical programme was also accused of ‘blatant sexism’ in attacking Ms Truss and Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries. Casting aspersions on Ms Truss’s mental state, Dee said Downing Street is ‘believed to be getting quotes for padded wallpaper’, while Ms Dorries was mocked as ‘Lady Barking’.
There was a time when this programme was funny. Indeed, Boris Johnson was a regular and he livened things up with his buffoonish act. That time has long passed, so accusations that it is merely nasty and spiteful really isn’t news.
As with many of the long-time comedy shows on BBC they are past their ‘sell-by’ date. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue’; ‘Just a Minute’ are terminally dead, but the BBC will not admit it. They should have stopped on the death of the two Chairmen (Humphry Littleton and Old Nick).
The BBC dare not stop them as they have nothing else to put in their place. Listen to the dire (so-called) comedy shows at 11;30 pm and you will hear a half hour of foul-mouthed rubbish.
Close-down the BBC and put it (and us) out of its misery.
Not just past their ‘sell-by’ date but bought into the Establishment. Which can suggest that drip by drip the nature of the Establishment has changed.
Now Establishments do change over enough time, but the current incarnation looms because the anti-Establishment humour and criticism is supressed.
I could understand the BBC lefties hating the Tories if they were actually Tories. Why they have a problem with the current crop of left wing idiots in cardboard Tory masks I have no idea.
The tories do have what some (not me) regard as far right policies – such as the benefit cap! And thinking that women don’t have penises.
And over in the HIGNFY green room far dark corner, neck bent over by the ceiling like the expanding Alice, is the squatting canard that is Joe Brandon.
Oh, how we laughed at cofeve.
There was a time when HIGNFY was funny, poking fun at everyone, irrespective of political views (anyone remember the tub of lard as Merton’s team member following Hattersley’s refusal to take part?). I stopped watching ever since I realised I was having more laughs cleaning the chip pan,
There was one episode where Mrs L and I looked at each other and decided that it was just spiteful. That was when we stopped.