As someone who listened to Russell Brand’s Radio 2 show religiously (that is, every Sunday morning with the hymn book of the Guardian website open on the football pages), I was saddened that he felt forced to resign over Manuelgate. Fresh comedy is rare enough without removing one of the few men whose manic energy allows him to be funny on a weekly basis. Admittedly the infamous show with Jonathan Ross was one of the weakest ones he had done (it also included a horrible fawning interview with Gael Garcia Bernal that was far more offensive than the phone call to Andrew Sachs) but that is the price you pay for the pleasures of an unscripted performance.
As Brand says in today’s Observer interview, the phone call to Manuel wasn’t made with any malicious intent. The only thing that holds the show together is the interviews, so when they found that Sachs wasn’t home it was bound to lead to a sense of desperation and silliness. What was said about Sachs’s grandaughter was tasteless, true, but ours is a culture which celebrates the idea of living in the moment and it is the moment, that joyful, flowing, unselfconscious ideal of the moment that is the nub of the problem. That moment, well, occasionally it has consequences.
When the controversy became hysterical, I got worried: what have I said here that people could use as a stick to beat me? Probably quite a lot, as there will be with anyone who has ever thought that, essentially, nothing really matters. This is certainly the case with Brand who holds that the physical world is transitory illusion. I’m not sure if a 78 year old man’s feelings are included in the category of transitory illusion, but the Daily Mail certainly didn’t think so.
No doubt, the moral majority would have been happy to let him enjoy his nihilism if his only medium of expression were a little read blog. The difference is that Brand is a tall poppy — ripe for the chop — whose escapades include a callous disregard for others feelings. Ah, feelings again . . . thing is, if you hurt someone’s feelings but your intentions were good are you still guilty? These days we are obsessed with other people’s feelings, as though they were fleshly things that deserve top billing. Unfortunately, it is impossible to reason with other people’s feelings . . . so let’s not.
Despite being a Trigger Happy TV fan, I find something about the spouting offensive inanities at someone for the sake of popular entertainment to be an infringement on human rights. Big Brother contestants sign up for it — this bloke didn’t agree to anything.
I must admit I’m one of those (what is it? 30,000?) people who was graciously and repeatedly given the opportunity to be disgusted by this BBC-headline news item despite not having heard the offending clip — and the biggest problem here is the BBC’s complete lack of any serious leadership or code of honour combined with its unadulterated love of overblown self-questioning and -criticism.
Still, there’s no denying Sachs deserves it.