Any evening with Jonathan Ross now means to me his wit in first hassling and upsetting with carefully chosen words a 78 year old man by phone and then suggesting he and Russell Brand should house-break and masturbate him while he slept as a way to say sorry for making obscene phone calls to him. Kinky! And illegal. For a really big laugh maybe next time he should try it on someone he knows well, like his Boss? Or a follower of Abu Hamza? Would he be amused if someone did it to one of his daughters?
Over all the years I've perhaps seen less than 30 minutes of BBC Star Man Ross's chat show because I find him so loathsome, some of the guests I saw were OK though - probably most of them who ever appeared were OK for all I know. As a chat show it seems pretty poor though what's so chatty about asking Tory leader David Cameron on this TV programme whether he ever masturbated to photographs of Margaret Thatcher? He chatted up Gwyneth Paltrow by simply asking her if she wanted to f*** him. However, Ross's yob mentality was finally totally exposed with the above revelations, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to warn the few decent folk around the world who might not know just how vile this man is and to steer clear of him and his - unless you think all comedy should be "edgy" ie obscene/vacuous. We're not yet all the same here, although BBC and Channel 4 are jettisoning all standards.
In October 2008 Ross with fellow tosser Russell Brand made a series of premeditated sexual obscene phone calls to Andrew Sachs' answer-phone (Manuel from Fawlty Towers), had it broadcast as intended on BBC national radio against Sachs' request and then tried to get Sachs' granddaughter to burn the evidence in case they got prosecuted. A significant number of people over here (probably most of them non BBC license fee payers) found it hilarious and/or that the national scandal had been overblown, but many people apparently still knew right from wrong and 42,851 eventually complained to BBC about the incident. Many unrighteous media fools and others snickered about these 42,851 never having heard the radio programme (and never wanting to) - using their argument they presumably also consider an event such as the Holocaust justified because at the time relatively few people complained to the media, and none of us here now should be horrified by it because we weren't there. The 2 BBC producers initially involved in passing it for broadcast thought it was "very funny and brilliant" comedy and only 2 people complained about Brand's radio programme at the time - which I'm afraid only indicated the moral level his 400,000 weekly listeners had sunk to with the help of BBC expertise. Highly moral BBC tried and failed to use it in mitigation in the later OFCOM investigation. Roll over Aristotle, tell Lord Reith the news! Sachs' agent complained to BBC but was ignored by them until a Tory national newspaper got hold of the story. The penalty for any ordinary pervert doing this would normally be sacking and prosecution, maybe even prison, but while Brand and the Head of BBC Radio 2 were both eventually ordered to resign the multi-millionaire Ross was given a 12 week holiday by BBC's Boss (I suppose that he asked Ross's permission first though if he could dock Ross's pay by £1,500,000, to prevent him from suing) to come back to this programme afresh in 2009 before his contract runs out. All that time to think of more smut and/or more insulting witlessness for his 4,000,000 viewers to admire - but at least he could still chortle his way to the bank as usual to keep his spirits up. Some people think that his position will be untenable and he won't be able to carry on. I think his skin is so thick because the stakes are so high that he will come back unbowed and re-energised with pent up vitriol. (Update 23.01.09: I've just watched the first 5 minutes of his new series - the "most enormous cock-up" - to use his referential phrase - is continuing to allow this sniggering unrepentant law-breaker to take the public's money like this.) But who knows: maybe in the future after the slimy British film & TV industries have comforted him for the moral stance taken by the 42,851 and showered him with awards he will become a Sir for his services to Perversion by the perverts in Government. At the least I hope this pair of edgy deviants sign up with other perverted commercial TV and radio stations and stay there, so I won't be paying for their flouting the law and spouting illegal obscenities in the future. In 2009 OFCOM fined British TV license-fee payers £150,000 for this "sorry" affair - Thanks Ross for offering to pay! Not.
To the apologists: Get a life/sense of humour/sense of proportion! It's not the end of the world having a pair of talentless perverts as your heroes and there's far more important things to worry about in this world, like the price of real cheese! To sum up family man Dross: a comedy genius to apparently millions of people (especially himself), merely a nasty obscene phone caller receiving an obscene wage packet from an obscene multimedia company to others. So much for our society of Political Correctness and Respect! As you should've guessed, it doesn't apply to the rich and famous and never will, but only to the poor. To sum up BBC: Stumbling blindly on from Huttongate, Campbellgate, Dykegate, Springergate, Crowngate, Phonegate now Rossgate I hope its next crisis will be Abolitiongate. I also hope anyone who thinks comedy should be always challenging and pushing back boundaries ie offensive aren't challenged or offended by my opinion of this particular law-breaking pervert, his perverted programmes and his current perverted employers.