Starkey

[gurnemanz]

I usually enjoy Starkey's history programmes. He is knowledgeable and entertaining, but when it comes to appearances on programmes like Newsnight he becomes tiresome by appearing to need to play up to his persona as being awkward and offensive. I suppose he realises that it is this image that gets him his gigs (highly paid as it seems from above messages), so he has to keep it going. For me, as is the danger for many a jaded schoolmaster (I know, I was one), he descends too far into the realm of annoying self-parody.

[Domeyhead]

RW has explained the thinking behind this: Rick Stein is not a knowledgeable expert on classical music; therefore he demonstrates that ordinary people can enjoy classical music and it isn't just for an elite group who appreciate the music at some rarified level which they cannot possibly attain. My own words, but the explanation is, I think, an accurate one.

That is such an insightful and revealing quote French Frank. Yes I can understand RW's desire and motivation - it is one shared in all walks of the BBC from cooking to physics but the problem in all areas is the same - why are the BBC so afraid to have skilled communicators doing the communicating? Being famous does not make someone a great communicator (and vice versa). The BBC has become so terrified of being thought of as elitist, that everything has to be conveyed via the medium of an everyday person-next-door celebrity. I suppose this is to try and create the impression that the viewer/listener is "at least as good as" the person doing the talking. THis just typifies this ridiculous maxim of moral equivalence that the BBC promotes - the idea that everyone's opinion is equally valid whether they have spent a lifetime studying something or a lunchtime rubbishing it.
I accept that classical music like good food and wine is "elitist" in that one comes to appreicate it gradually, and not everyone is willing or able to make that commitment. What I don't accept and why I don't accept RW's proposition is this crazy idea that someone must be "talking down to me" just because they know more than I do. If anything it is this use of pointless diletantes and unskilled celebrities that is patronising, and condescending.
The whole concept of using celebrities to create an entry level into music appreciation is doctrinaire nonsense .

[Nick Armstrong]

Usually in the past, I've found Starkey a bracing listen, even if what he says is tosh (sometimes - not infrequently, though, he calls a spade a spade in a way that others fear to, and is quite right).

However he's latterly decended into self parody, I think, sadly. His appearance on Question Time last week was a prime example of taking the role of 'waspish soothsayer' to pantomime dame extremes, and as a result he undermined practically everything he said, irrespective of whether it was right or wrong. What was entertaining and bracing has recently become boorish and embarrassing, to my mind - more's the pity.