The box of idiots

The BBC’s campaign of self-flagellation continued apace this weekend, as they fell back on that most tried and tested source of badly-chosen words: The football pundit.

Sunday night, and I sit watching Match Of The Day 2, furiously trying to fathom what Alan Pardew might have said to trick my mind into thinking he had used the verb to rape as a metaphor for Michael Essien’s superiority to a member of the opposing team.



‘He can’t have said rape, surely not… What did he say? Rate? Rain? Raid? Rake? Is this program filmed live?’ Somehow the answer to all these questions came back no. Pardew said, ‘he’s raped him’ and Hanson drew some circles on a screen to demonstrate how it came to pass.

Now, I of all people appreciate the value of taking a violent, abhorrent act of physical oppression and using it to describe something relatively harmless and inoffensive. However, I would think twice, thrice and then twice again, before employing this particular comedic device on the MOTD2 couch. Furthermore, I would think as hard, if not more so, when editing a programme as stern-faced and conservative as MOTD2, before allowing such a device to survive the final edit.

But the BBC likes to do things a little differently. Things have changed at the home of Last Of The Summer Wine, Songs Of Praise and Ben Fogel’s big soppy Lion face. A new directive is in town – effective as of Brand & Ross – that stipulates constant pushing of boundaries and flicking of switches. Brilliant!

So, never one to pass over a job opportunity, I have drafted a handful of suggestions to pitch to the lofty old Owls of BBC tower that might fit right in to their new and improved programming objective.

- Badger-baiting with Bill Oddie. Send that beardy old Goody into a Cumbrian forest with a bag of butcher’s off-cuts and a large stick, to document the reaction of badgers to the BBC’s own violent brand of carrot and stick psychology.
- Big Ron pays his tab. Have disgraced football pleb ‘Big Ron Atkinson’ decked out like the naughty little strumpet he is – short skirt, high heels, face thick with make-up – and sent to wander the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, plying his “trade”.
- Clarkson's abomination hour. Everyone loves Jeremy Clarkson and it's a generally accepted FACT that his views are reasonable and well-founded. So, why not have him spend some time outing the travesties of Britich culture as he sees them? Imagine episode one: Clarkson races past the camera on horseback, screaming 'some people think fox-hunting is a barbaric, sensless pastime... THEY'RE WRONG, it's really the future solution to this country's illegal immigration problems... IN DISGUISE!'