Here's a handy Timeline of the events that caused this

in short, when recording Russell Brand's Radio2 show, Brand & Jonathan Ross left messages on 78 yr-old actor Andrew Sachs (famous for playing Manuel in sitcom Fawlty Towers)' answerphone, in which they crudely jibed about Brand having slept with Sachs' granddaughter-

all this was cleared by BBC production and management and later broadcast on air.

right-wing tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail got wind of this, and stirred up a public campaign to have the pair sacked. public complaints about the show poured in to the media regulatory body Ofcom, and the issue snowballed. Sachs' agent wrote a complaint to Radio2/6Music controller Lesley Douglas- and got no reply. and her superior, head of radio Tim Davie failed to apologise either.

what could have been quickly nipped in the bud with decisive action by BBC radio management became a national scandal, with even prime minister Gordon Brown condemning Brand & Ross' behaviour, and BBC director General Mark Thompson was forced to act- ordering an inquiry.

soon after, Russell Brand had resigned from his Radio2 show, Jonathan Ross was suspended from his own Radio2 show and BBC1 chat show.

and then, after much press speculation as to which members of BBC production and management staff would get the boot, Lesley Douglas resigned.

Douglas seems to be getting hailed as a martyr in the Guardian and Independent for taking the rap and protecting her staff from getting fired, but things aren't how they first appear.

veteran DJ Paul Gambaccini revealed in an interview on BBC Radio5live how Lesley Douglas had indulged "her pet" Russell Brand with absolute power over production staff to the point that he only answered to her

and a leaked story to Holy Moly would suggest that junior staff were threatening to walk out en masse if the producer of the offending Brand show was fired as a scapegoat, and management refused to take the blame.

indeed, Douglas had no qualms about firing a producer as a scapegoat in last year's faked phone-ins scandal.

here's an insight into what Lesley Douglas allowed Russell Brand to get away with when she employed him first on Radio2's sister station, 6Music.

personally, I'm glad to see Brand go- I find him utterly contrived, fake and plagiaristic (eg. his theft of the "heroin is very moreish" line and other observations from genuine comedy genius Harry Hill) but not actually funny, and his appointment to 6Music would seem to have been the watershed point at which Lesley Douglas found she could turn 6MUSIC into 6CHAT- with the music content drastically reduced and replaced with lowest common denominator irrelevant banter.

more recently she justified her appointment of the repellant (television-sourced as per Brand) George Lamb to the station with a ludicrous argument that it was to appeal to women's "less intellectual, more emotional reaction to music",

so good riddance to her. this little game exemplifies the regard many 6Music Radio2 and listeners have for her.

here's hoping that the next controller of Radio2 and 6music (ideally 6Music should have its own controller) doesn't also have a weakness for pretty boys off television, and wants to turn 6Music back into being a dedicated music station.

no more glittering prizes and endless compromises, please.

*UPDATE* Dave Barber, the head of music and specialist compliance at Radio 2 & 6Music has also resigned now

Barber, like Lesley Douglas, arrogantly and patronisingly batted away listeners' complaints about the dire George Lamb 6Music show, so I won't miss him either.
the BBC gets portrayed by the tabloid papers as being run by out-of-touch fatcats, untouchable and unaccountable atop their ivory towers, while given free use of public money- and this whole sorry fiasco only adds weight to this impression of how the corporation is run. it would appear that Barber was used to bullshitting his way out of trouble, until this press scandal caught them all unawares and ill-equipped to handle it.

"but don't worry", the evil leader tells them, "no-one will ever know about them".

news from an EV driver's blog
new developments in the production of electric goods vehicles-

Smith Edison van

Smith Newton 7.5 ton truck

130 mile range, 50mph top speed, and Sainsbury's are planning to use them.

the scene portrayed in that usborne science book is feasible after all. an electric vehicle revolution is possible.

and in a shock announcement, General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner calls for an end to petrol cars, and offers ethanol as an alternative, greener fuel.

"Electrically driven vehicles are the answer in the medium to long term," says Wagoner ,"but we need to do something else in the interim."

they offered the electric car, then killed it off, and now are still dodging offering it again, even though they know it's the answer, and they have all the technology.

I guess it depends on your own sense of humour and whether you spot the references I'm getting at.

it's a collection of parody snippets of banal, predictable TV programmes, TV ads, films and film trailers, with me doing various accents.
re. the title, that's a dig at Guy Ritchie's films- it's the basic premise of all of them- cheeky cockney gangsters, and their wacky adventures.

first off,

Vernon Kay/Shaun Keaveny-style reminiscing about Rubiks cubes, over a sort of Paul Young 80's ballad with fretless bass;

this would be in one of those "I love 1982"-type nostalgia programs.
Rubiks cubes, Sinclair Spectrums (Spectra?) BMX bikes, mobile phones the size of bricks etc, and a bunch of celebrities brought in to offer their supposedly amusing commentary on them. cheap, lazy TV that fills space nicely in the schedules.

Tim Westwood-style rap compilation TV/radio ad.

the music's a parody of that "Still DRE" or whatever song.


White Stripes pisstake- album TV/radio ad in the style of Zane Lowe.

for an authentic Meg White bass drum sound I just whacked the strings of my bass.
New Moronic Excess- does that need explaining? hype, emperor's new clothes, rubbish music.

Generic US action film trailer with stereotypical gruff voiceover.

I just can't keep a straight face when those trailers are on "NAAAAAAAAAAMMMM....it was HELLLLLLLLL" "in the future, only one man had the will to survive...".


Big Brother commentary.

the ultimate in banal TV- watching boring people in a house- all day.

Harry Hill's TV Burp put it perfectly with the "Big brother highlight of the week"- footage of people in the house yawning.

video cassette (oh, remember those? they were the size of a suitcase and took all day to rewind...) loading,
trailer for Guy Ritchie film plays.

I was going for a Jason Statham impression for the monologue setting up his character.
and there's the Brick Top-type bad guy threatening him.
ends with me ejecting the video cassette and smashing it with a hammer.

the pic in the player is a montage of various photoshops (only I did them in Paintshop pro)-

George the Hippo and Zippy from 80's kids' program Rainbow made to look like gangster rappers/with a one-string fretless bass,

Geoffrey from Rainbow made to look like a gangster rapper too (pic taken from a flyer for a christmas panto he was in as The King)- a background of gold bars, and a "parental advisory" label added.

Sophie Ellis Bextor's wide face exaggerated for comic effect-
Sophie Ellis-Bigface and Sophie Ellis-Bigface-Deathstar.
what can I say? silly, puerile, but she deserves parody, the stuck-up bint, who once sneered at everyone fronting indie band Theaudience, and now sneers at everyone as a would-be disco diva.

Jabbaworm- Jabba 'shopped with a hat and red Jackson superstrat to look like the guitarist of the covers band i used to be in.

also "Roo-boy"- the singer of said band's face 'shopped onto Skippy the bush kangeroo (because he's from New Zealand...close enough) and a speech bubble saying his favourite adjective "brutal".

and in the centre my childhood panda teddy bear with a couple of basses.


so there you have it.

I found a book entitled "Radio: a true love story" going in Poundland, by Libby Purves, Radio 4 producer, presenter, newspaper columnist etc., which autobiographically charts her career in radio starting from a childhood fascination with the medium.

£1 seemed worth a go, so I bought it. previously I'd passed on a John Peel biography in Poundland, as his story was well known, and a bit of an obvious choice, plus the fact that I never really rated his music tastes or ability as a DJ- I've rarely listened to Radio 1.

the first chapter, including a failed over-ambitious attempt to build a transistor radio from a kit at age 8 ("I suppose one of the functions of mail order is to accustom the young early to the dismay and disappointment of adult life") , brought back a lot of my own memories of discovering radio.
today we take for granted the huge amount of information readily available on the internet- streaming radio, streaming video, podcasts, with a full audio spectrum, but once you were grateful just to receive a crackly mono audio signal on medium wave radio.

radios were always present in my family house- I remember a huge oblong Pye valve radio with a wood case and cream-coloured push-buttons, that was discarded when it was usurped by transistor technology- unfortunately my father wasn't one to preserve things for posterity.
my mother always had a small portable radio on, tuned to BBC Radio 4, 3 or 2 while doing the cooking, ironing, etc.
crackly and harsh (all midrange with no bass or treble), but nevertheless still conveying the voices and music.

my own first radio was the simple crystal set medium-wave radio project in an electronics set, that I think my mum bought for my brother, most probably from the Reject Shop on the King's Road, Chelsea, in the days when she, a psychologist, worked at the nearby Cheyne Centre for Spastic children in the late 70's/early 80's.
(incidentally I found a couple of articles she co-wrote, mentioned on the net- 
A token economy ward programme with chronic schizophrenic patients 1975 (when she was a mental health officer at Springfield hospital, Tooting)
The efficacy of teaching dyslexics 1985 (when she was principal of the Dyslexia clinic at St.Bartholomew's hospital))

the crystal set was very easy to build- only a few components, no power needed, and no soldering needed as that electronics set consisted of each component mounted on a board with springs you stuck wires into to connect them up.
the drawback was it was tied down by the ground wire and aerial cable, but it was fine for the "listening under the bedclothes" that everyone fondly talks of, usually when reminiscing about John Peel.

but unlike a lot of people, I didn't grow up listening to John Peel. after I got my first FM radio (a Sanyo cassette walkman with radio), the first station I listened to for music was Capital Radio, 95.8. chart music of the times, the mid-to-late 80's, and back catalogue. but I got bored of hearing the same playlisted output, and grew out of the same old dj banter,  so I looked around and found next door at 94.9, GLR- Greater London Radio, the BBC station for London.   
it was here I heard the likes of  Joy Division, Magazine, The Cure, The Icicle Works/Ian Mcnabb.

they also had specialist genre shows such as country (Mary Costello), metal (Krusher, with his dog, Bullseye) and a funk/r n' b/disco one (Norman Jay).

I sent off for a free FM radio tuned to Capital 95.8 on offer in the Observer newspaper;
I knew there had to be some way of retuning it- they couldn't make a radio exclusively for one station, so I opened it up, and nudged one of the copper coils on the circuit board with a screwdriver until GLR 94.9 came out of it. 

also I think it was here I first heard "The Spirit of Radio" by Rush. I certainly remember GLR DJ Peter Curran making a typically dry quip about "poodle perms" before playing it one time.
to hardcore prog fans, this song could be seen as the canadian progsters selling out, simplifying and commercialising their sound, to get a breakthrough radio hit- which they did, back in 1980. but it's definitely a prog song- how many current chart guitar bands could play that fiendishly tricky unison bridge riff?

"The Spirit Of Radio"

Begin the day with a friendly voice
A companion unobtrusive
Plays that song that's so elusive
And the magic music makes your morning mood

Off on your way, hit the open road
There is magic at your fingers
For the Spirit ever lingers
Undemanding contact in your happy solitude

Invisible airwaves crackle with life
Bright antennae bristle with the energy
Emotional feedback on timeless wavelength
Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free

All this machinery making modern music
Can still be open hearted
Not so coldly charted
It's really just a question of your honesty, yeah
Your honesty
One likes to believe in the freedom of music
But glittering prizes and endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity

For the words of the profits were written on the studio wall
Concert hall
And echoes with the sounds of salesmen

the last 3 lines were a subversion of lyrics in Simon and Garfunkel's "the sound of silence"; and the words of the prophets were written on the subway walls... and echoes with the sounds of silence.

sadly, "glittering prizes and endless compromises" have repeatedly blighted my radio stations of choice.

Libby Purves writes in her book of the strange way the BBC can operate- being a publicly-funded body, like the National Health Service that my mum worked in, actual profits don't enter the equation, whereas commercially funded stations live or die depending on them-
the BBC can take risks, innovate, challenge and educate its listeners, potentially creating a new audience, OR it can just play it safe, copy the commercial success stories and cater to the same audience as them, and steal their audience, and then gloat over ratings rises and pat themselves on the back with bonuses all round for management personnel, ie. dumbing-down.
it just depends on who's in charge. because once change is in motion at the BBC, nothing will stand in its way, be it objections by listeners or staff, petitions etc.
programmes will be terminated, presenters and producers sacked, glowing press releases cooked up for the new shows and lies told and the truth suppressed wherever possible.   

well, in short GLR got dumbed-down and killed off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_London_94.9

I listened to XFM, london's indie/alt-rock commercial station, then that got bought by the GCAP (Capital Radio) group and dumbed-down too, with an infuriating level of playlist repetition ie. the same songs every 3hours. hearing the White Stripes' "seven nation army" all the time made me parody it in Cheeky cockney gangsters.

JazzFM 102.2, the commercial jazz station, started out well, then got smoothed-out - more and more smooth easy listening jazz to the point in the end they just renamed it "Smooth FM". Bland FM, more like.

when the BBC launched its digital radio stations, 6Music seemed like a very welcome resurrection of the old GLR.
and it was, for a couple of years.
but, regrettably and inevitably the BBC have decided to go for the glittering prizes there too now, and are dumbing it down with more chat like the commercial stations, less music and more playlist repetition of the music there is. the press releases claim ratings rises, but it's pretty obvious the rises are due to more people being able to access the station through buying DAB radios that are getting cheaper all the time, like any new technology. 
 
what is strange is that the stations I've turned to are GCAP-owned- Planet Rock and The Jazz on DAB. The Jazz follows on from the original Jazz FM, with some of its original presenters.
it'll be a sorry state of affairs if commercial stations are more daring in their output than the BBC's stations.