Gawker: defamer, bbc

The Hilarious Side of Stuffy British Politics

Richard Lawson — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:15:53 EDT

In the Loop, Armando Iannucci's new political satire, is getting near across-the-board raves. It's funny and British! What's also funny and British (maybe funnier and Britisher?) is the series on which it's based, The Thick of It. The first episode:

And, yes, we are aware of the whole Chris Langham unfortunateness.

Don't Tell Gwyneth Paltrow That You Want to Fuck Her on Live TV

Kyle Buchanan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:40:35 EST

In the United States, an uncomfortable talk show interview usually involves an uncommunicative Twilight star or a vaguely gross suggestion of backseat nookie from Jay Leno. Across, the pond, however, restrictions are looser — or at least they were, until Russell Brand mucked things up in the ribald BBC voicemail scandal that we still don't fully understand (we think it involved Fawlty Towers, Satanists, and a giant bird's nest of hair). Now, British chat show host Jonathan Ross is being investigated for another example of bad language (shown in the above clip), in which he asks A-list actress Gwyneth Paltrow about her kids and then announces that he would like to fuck her and that she's clearly "gagging for it." Someone's been taking interview tips from The Advocate!

BBC Trust criticises Jonathan Ross over lewd comment to Gwyneth Paltrow [The Guardian]

BBC Sentenced To Identifying And Correcting Every Lie In History By Decree Of An Angry Queen

Seth — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 20:56:19 EDT

The fallout continues from last week's royal debacle, in which the BBC was forced to publicly apologize to The Scariest Lady on the Planet, aka Queen Elizabeth II, for having rearranged footage to make it seem as though she had stormed out of a photo session with Annie Leibovitz. A Year with the Queen producers RDF Media e-mailed the director-general of the BBC, accepting full responsibility for what they refer to as "a serious error of judgment." Somehow, not even the divvying of blame among sub-production entities has done much to lessen the Queen's wrath, as The WOW Report's Fenton Bailey reprints an e-mail he received from a BBC contact:

Dear Fenton
As a result of the BBC/RDF Queen misrepresentation, myself and a number of other Execs are having to contact all our suppliers over the past 3 years to review our output. To sum up, this is to see if they may have in any way misled the viewer with anything that has been broadcast by the BBC.

If you feel there is anything you wish to discuss, please feel free to call me. It will not in any way be held against you, but we've been asked to make these calls to everyone, just to be on the safe side.
Sorry for having to send this out, and please do not take it any way personally.

Let that be a lesson to anyone else who might be harboring similar plans to use an Avid bay to paint a caricature of an ill-tempered and humorless Queen of England: Not only will you have to repeatedly and publicly apologize for the trickery, but the gesture will so incense Her Majesty, she'll order a massive audit of every hour of TV broadcast by your network for the past three years, in order to assure that similar factual discrepancies might not have also deceived a gullible public.

Knickers in a Twist [The WOW Report]