Dave Hill's Big Britain

New News At Ten: Poor Show

So it returned with a scoop, but it was one of no consequence - Princess Di's number one guy speaks. Over on Beeb 1, John Simpson was filing, partly live, an intrepid report from Zimbabwe where Auntie is not allowed. Not only was this a hands-down win where this viewer is concerned but, it seemed, a statement of intent to eschew any ratings-driven race to the bottom. Yet Di was the Ten O'Clock News's second story, suggesting they would have led with it had they got the Khan exclusive. Unsurprising, but disappointing just the same - as so often with today's BBC.

Kiss My Arse

Oh, this is embarrassing:

"BBC Radio 1 has said it will stand by its ban on the word 'faggot' from the Pogues' 1987 Christmas hit Fairytale of New York to avoid offence. The word, sung by the late Kirsty MacColl as she trades insults with Shane MacGowan, has been dubbed out. But MacColl's mother, Jean, called the ban 'too ridiculous', while the Pogues said they found it 'amusing'. The BBC said: 'We are playing an edited version because some members of the audience might find it offensive.' A Radio 1 spokeswoman said the station's management had met on Tuesday morning to discuss the issue. She said they 'had made their decision' and would not be going back on it."

Where to start? In the song, MacColl and MacGowan play the parts of characters who would use those terms of abuse. To enact is not to endorse. Meanwhile, the Beeb pays bully boy Chris Moyles and arrogant Jonathan Ross tons of our money to be offensive by their very presence. I may weep.

UPDATE: Hah! They've changed their minds!

Right Wing BBC

Driving back from visiting my mother yesterday I switched on Radio 4. On Pick Of The Week, presenter Gerry Anderson's first selection was made in order to illustrate his low opinion of sociology, his second to show how worthless he thought the Sixties counterculture. Catch his drift? A little later, I re-tuned to Five Live and heard Jeff Randall on Weekend Business ask one of his guests, a (female) magazine company boss, why images of voluptuous women so often appear on the covers of her products in what he called "these politically correct times." Later, when I'd got home, I caught a little of The Westminster Hour which included a report on immigration, featuring contributions from a succession of speakers claiming there was far too much of it.

None of these examples of a right-wing mindset colouring BBC programmes particularly bothered me. I found it incongruous that Anderson was so opinionated, Randall's question illogical - if those magazine covers represent the antithesis of "political correctness" then their very ubiquity suggests that these times are not, in fact "politically correct" - and The Westminster Hour report, a little one-dimensional. But other BBC output leans a little to the left and so I think, all things considered, that an overall political neutrality is maintained. Of course, some on the right are obsessed by the idea that the BBC is loaded against them and bang on about it relentlessly. Perhaps that's the trouble with we lefty liberals: when, as happens quite often, the Corporation leans to the right, we are far too well balanced to fly into a rage.