Branded as bad men?!

Oscar Wilde probably said something quite pithy about shagging a friends granddaughter, but if he did I didn't hear it.

Today Russell Brand took one for the team, and Jonathan Ross made an abject apology in an effort to save his salary, or at least to do a bit of damage limitation on his career. I listened to the podcast of the Radio 2 show (as a regular subscriber to it I might add, and not an enraged Daily Mail reader who wanted to achieve a suitably high blood pressure before complaining to the Beeb) and while it crossed many lines of taste, it was actually quite funny. It seemed to me to be two silly boys stuck in a room with an old cassette recorder being rude and silly. A moderate Derek and Clive for the 21st century. It really amounted to two egos sparking off each other. Of course it was going to get 'sexual' - it always does! Jonathan Ross DID transgress when he swore. Russell Brand DID transgress when he talked about Andrew Sachs granddaughter. Yes they took it too far, and yes, they caused great offense to Andrew Sachs himself, and for that they should hand their heads in shame.

But wait a minute. Let's take a measured look at what happened.

1. It was a pre-recoreded show, therefore someone at an editorial level decided not only to edit it, but also to release it in the form that caused so much 'offence'.
2. There were only 2 or 3 complaints on the night of the broadcast. That swelled to 27,000 by this time today. That means that the 26,998 who didn't complain on the night must have listened to the show via the podcast, or through BBC iPlayer, or, as is more likely, 'heard' it second or third hand through some other outraged friend.
3. You know what you're going to get with Russell Brand. That's not an attempt to excuse the content of his last radio show - there's no justification for leaving what he left on Andrew Sach's mobile phone. What he said was wrong and while his apology was late, I fell it was genuine (genuine, because it wasn't an attempt to save his job, but was made after the announcement that he was resigning). Those who listened in 'live' or who downloaded the podcast were well aware of the sort of thing they were going to get.

Are Russell and Jonathan bad men? Stupid, yes. Juvenile, yes. Thoughtless, yes. Bad, no.

We're in the middle of a Credit Crunch where repossessions of people's homes are up 70% from the same period last year. We're in a situation where Environmentalists are talking about having reached 'tipping point' for our planet. Cancer and other life threatening diseases are on the increase. War and poverty continue to wreck the lives of the most vulnerable people on our planet. Ross says "fuck" and Brand says "I shagged your granddaughter". Not good. But surely not all that bad.