Thatcher, Golliwogs and the BBC

How on earth has the BBC got itself embroiled in a racism battle over some green room comments made by a tedious nobody? The fact that the Carol Thatcher Golliwog row has erupted into a story getting significant time on the Today programme and filling column inches suggests a serious misjudgment. It has given the anti-BBC, anti-public service broadcasting lobby another stick to beat it with by turning innuendo and hearsay about a crap joke made by a middle-aged, Middle England non-entity into a racism scandal.

What Carol Thatcher said was misplaced, foolish, and showed a lack of understanding of the modern world (a Thatcher, who'd have thought it...?). Whether it was said with malice only she and those who heard it know. But just why the BBC had to turn what amounted to an internal disciplinary issue (it was a private comment not a Brand-esque public broadcast, after all) into a headline story, is unclear. Anyone at the Corporation with an ounce of sense must have been able to see that the story is the perfect tabloid storm: the Thatcher link, a C-List celebrity, a pantomime villain in Jo Brand (the presenter alleged to have made the complaint), and a whiff of 'political correctness gone mad' as all the "I'm not a racist but-ers" charge in to defend the comment. Why couldn't the BBC just take her off the One Show and, if pushed, announce it was for editorial reasons. Would Thatcher have then gone to the press to explain the reasons behind the BBC's move? Unlikely. That could only have embarrassed her.

Instead, the BBC is left trying to defend a mess of contradictions in its reaction.

If it believes Carol Thatcher is genuinely racist then it is inexplicable that it has taken her off the One Show but intimated that it will still employ her for other TV engagements (why give a racist a platform?).

If it doesn't believe what she said was racist then logically it must accept her defence that the comments were intended in (misguided) jest, in which case it looks like a massive over-reaction to take her off the One Show and publish the reason for doing so.

If it believes that a permanent expulsion from a show is a fitting measure for a crap off-air joke that it accepts is not racist, it is indefensible that Jonathan Ross is back on-screen 3 months after a wilfully offensive on-air joke. If it believes that insensitive, prejudicial words should never be used by its presenters, whatever their intended meaning, then why does it continue to employ Chris Moyles?

If it just wanted to create space for a new presenter to freshen up the dull-as-ditchwater One Show it could have managed Carol Thatcher out gradually without creating an unnecessary controversy.

What the response really smacks of is a BBC cowed by the Brand-Ross affair seeking desperately to prove that it is in-tune with public sensibilities at a time when its continued funding is under review through the Public Service Broadcasting Review and the Digital Britain report. If it concentrated on the quality of its programming and thought about the consistency of its messages and actions it might succeed in doing so. Instead, it looks petty, short-sighted, inconsistent, and absurd.