bureauista » Jonathan Ross http://bureauista.com/blog This is my blog. Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:58:46 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 You put Russell in the ratatouille!? http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/10/you-put-russell-in-the-ratatouille/ http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/10/you-put-russell-in-the-ratatouille/#comments Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:48:00 +0000 bureauista http://www.bureauista.com/blog/?p=31 I’ve been following the whole Ross-Brand fiasco story in the media with some interest, as Brand is a common topic of conversation among my peer group. Only last week a friend and I were watching him on TV and agreed that he was struggling. His entire show was based around dissecting untrue news stories about his [...]]]> I’ve been following the whole Ross-Brand fiasco story in the media with some interest, as Brand is a common topic of conversation among my peer group. Only last week a friend and I were watching him on TV and agreed that he was struggling. His entire show was based around dissecting untrue news stories about his sexual exploits, a gambit he has used over and over again on his radio show. There was none of the gentle whimsy he can be so good at. I suppose he really has disappeared up his own backside as fame has consumed him; a shame, as his early shows on Radio 2 (I missed the 6Music ones) were often absolute gems. Instead of talking about himself incessantly, he spent large parts of his show giving advice to listeners on unusual problems. One that sticks in my memory was about a woman whose dog barked incessantly whenever she was driving. Over the course of the show, Brand got her to take the dog out in her car then hold her phone to the dog’s ear so he could calm it down (amazingly, it seemed to work). Each week the problems were entirely different, allowing Brand to free-associate at will, leading to many laugh-out-loud moments. I stopped listening to his podcast with any regularity last year when he dropped that item in favour of talking almost exclusively about himself. In the earlier stages of his career he was merely becoming famous, and his dissections of his own celebrity resonated more, purely because they were an unusual comic device at the time; he really ought to have moved on over a year ago, or done the decent Eminem thing of recognising when you’ve run out of material, and bowed out gracefully to concentrate on his acting.

As for the answer phone messages that lead to his downfall – I’ve heard him leave similar messages many times. What about the non-stop sexism and homophobia (so patiently pointed out to him by Simon Amstell recently) – why has he never been censured for any of that before? I suppose the addition of smug Jonathan Ross and his over-inflated salary was just too much for certain people to bear. I’m a fan of both Brand and Ross to an extent, but I’m glad this has happened. Brand’s material was getting very tired, and hopefully Ross will think twice before trotting out his standard Carry-on comments in future. It was an overreaction in terms of the crime itself, but long overdue when you consider how much these clowns get paid to produce ill-prepared, lazy, predictable, patronising material week after week after week. Let’s hope they both go away and raise their game.

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