Here's Russell Brand on Desert Island Discs explaining the 'prank' that he and Jonathan Ross played on Andrew Sachs, by leaving lewd messages on his answer machine. Apparently the fuss wasn't about his (and Ross's) behaviour - it was because the BBC has many enemies waiting to make capital of such things.
As a result of the fuss, Brand and the controller of Radio 2 resigned and Ross was suspended from broadcasting for three months.
On Desert Island Discs, Brand said:
He claimed the thousands of people who complained were motivated by an agenda against publicly-funded media:
Here's the story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23383451
As a result of the fuss, Brand and the controller of Radio 2 resigned and Ross was suspended from broadcasting for three months.
On Desert Island Discs, Brand said:
"Anything that damages something I love, I'm going to feel sorry for. And I'm sorry also because the story I tell myself, of myself, is not that I am a man who is rude to people who are in a position of vulnerability - but what's difficult, Kirsty, is there was obviously a pre-existing agenda in privately-owned media to destabilise, attack and diminish the BBC.
He claimed the thousands of people who complained were motivated by an agenda against publicly-funded media:
"Listen, Kirsty, after the show there were two complaints. After it was in the Daily Mail there were subsequently 42,000 complaints. I'm sure their offence was genuine - it was wrong, and I apologise for that - but how the information is presented is important. The thing I want to address here, the thing that 42,000 people were offended by is offensive. It is offensive if someone calls up an answerphone, does some swearing, hangs up.
"But if, incrementally, that act is led to by a series of innuendos and in-jokes, then it is a different thing. It is still a thing that is wrong, but it's not the thing that they are offended by."
"But if, incrementally, that act is led to by a series of innuendos and in-jokes, then it is a different thing. It is still a thing that is wrong, but it's not the thing that they are offended by."
Here's the story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23383451
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