30,000 complaints over phone prank in UK

[P.J. Denyer]

Although the tabloids have undoubtedly done all they can to stoke this fire and sentimentality towards 'Manuel' certainly plays it's part, I think it does reflect the fact that a lot of people found this very distasteful. Phoning the grandfather of your ex and bragging about having sex with her isn't a prank, if it hadn't been done by a celebrity it would have been harrasment and the perpetrators considered pond scum.

The fact that this was being paid for by a corporation funded by what is a tax in all but name stirred up a lot of long held resentment about the Beeb's seeming unaccountability to those who pay for it. Sadly the wider debate that could have come out of this doesn't seem to have materialised....

 

[Rolfe]

I still think the most offensive thing about this was the phraseology which suggested that sex was something done to a woman, as if Georgina Baillie wasn't a person who had some say in the matter. And that this (presumably consensual) encounter was presented by Brand as him having rendered Sachs's granddaughter (apparently his property, rather than a person in her own right) "damaged goods", and that as a result of this damage to his property, Sachs might be inferred to be suicidal.

The sheer mysogeny was enough to make it a hanging offence in my book.

Rolfe.

 

[Soapy Sam]

I had never heard of Brand prior to this business.
As far as Ross is concerned, he's one of two "entertainers" I simply can't stomach on any level, to the extent that when the GF watches him, I take my book to another room (her house, her tv, her choice, but I'm damned if I'll contaminate my brain with his inane twittering crap).
The other, incidentally, is Noel Edmonds. There are levels of BS no thinking being should be exposed to. If ever I needed a reason to refuse to buy a TV licence, these two would be more than adequate.