
Bleungberg is currently very angry and mightily annoyed at middle England, at old people and the majority of the 18000+ people who have complained about the Russell Brand-Jonathan Ross prank call to Manuel and his satanic slut granddaughter.
Bleungberg is not condoning the two presenters’ unfunny prank to Andrew Sachs on Radio 2 (Radio 2!!!), and likewise their remarks about ‘consensually fucking Sachs’s granddaughter with a condom’ which was very tasteless.
However, only TWO (2) of people complained at the time of the broadcast, on free-to-air national radio - TEN DAYS AGO on 18th October!!!
It took the Mail on Sunday and its sister paper The Daily Mail - the bastion of middle England and BBC basher-in-chief - a full week and a bit to lay into this. Presumably, they’d been tipped off about it by someone who’d belatedly listened to the broadcast and thought, ‘here’s our chance to seek revenge on the socialist broadcaster’!!
It was only after the Mail On Sunday’s front-page splash on October 26th (!!!!!!!!) that the whole affair snowballed into this massive row fuelled by condemnations by politicians and the subsequent suspensions of the two presenters.
By the Monday after the publication of the story, a few thousand people had complained - undoubtedly on the back of the Mail’s lead. That soon became 18000 as more media outlets repeated the obscene broadcast, with the clip on youtube generating over 300 000 hits.
You only need half a brain to work out that 95% of the complainants took action MUCH MUCH LATER and ONLY AFTER reading about the story or seeing it on the internet. In other words, their complaints are based entirely upon secondary sources, causing an embarrassing delay in middle England foaming at the mouth.
How many of these morons had even heard the broadcast or read the transcript in full? How many of them genuinely cares or were genuinely offended?
There’s a sense of deja-vu about the Satanic Slutgate. The most comparable situation was the 50 000 people who ‘complained’ about the broadcast of ‘Jerry Springer - The Opera’ on BBC2 almost four years ago.
The broadcast itself drew over 8000 complaints (a fair amount), which was swelled to 50 000 when crazy religious groups took action and mass-harrassed the BBC switchboard.
Fast forward to 2008, and we have a similar situation with the Daily Mail taking the place of the religious fundamentalists, driving a campaign in its bitter hatred towards an institution which it has long-regarded as a Labour-leaning, liberally-biased and financially-no-holds-barred BBC.
The Mail has, in part, got what it wants - the suspensions of the two presenters - but I doubt it would get the double-sacking which it craves so badly. Brand has resigned but the BBC cannot and will not let their prized-asset Ross go without a fight.
Yes, there was a serious breach of editorial judgement on the BBC’s part - and whoever cleared the clip for broadcast should be sacked. However, we must also take a step back and assess the situation in a rational way, and that is to say that the majority of the country was not in the least bit offended by the broadcast. Such ‘humour’ was to be expected from Brand and Ross, who both thrive on smuttiness and near-the-knuckle pranks.
But let’s not forget why they did it in the first place, and much of the blame lies squarely with Georgina Baillie, the 23-year-old Satanic Slut granddaughter in question.
This attention-seeking woman had auditioned for Page 3 - with her tits out - and is known to dress like a goth to accentuate her voluptuous figure. In our opinion, that makes her fair game to Brand and Ross.
Getting Andrew Sachs involved is, of course, wrong and incredibly foolish. But if you look it at from Ms Baillie’s perspective - her media profile was zero before Sunday, and is now on the front-page of every national newspaper, and it’s going to be quids in from now on for this young woman.
Her celebrity stock has easily risen twenty-fold in the last week, and she has already enlisted the help of PR guru Max Clifford to denouce the Radio 2 duo. which is always a good pointer in how to exploit the media in order to make more dosh.
How much is Clifford charging her, and how much did she make from the interview(s) with The Sun (two outfits, two locations, reiterating the same thing)? Does that make her more likely to land a job on a cable channel presenting in bondage gear or selling bird cages on QVC? Of course, it does.
By calling for Ross and Brand’s sackings and by portraying herself as an ‘innocent victim’, Ms Baillie’s already emerged as the outright winner from this whole saga.
But it won’t be long before the Daily Mail turns on her and rebrands her from ‘prank-call victim’ to ‘attention-seeking media satanic slut’.
As for Brand, Ross and Sachs - they’ll all survive. Pity the show’s producer and the output controller of Radio 2 instead!
