Brand has quit the BBC.
Am a huge fan of his Podcasts, very sorry to hear this.
This will go on for ages now, ross and brand apologised so everyone should just move on
Too late for that, Brand is gone, he’ll concetrate on the US for the near future, which is a shame.
Ross will be alright.
its a bit mad dont ya think. he overstepped the mark no doubt but its a bit harsh in my opinion. I wouldnt take anything that those two say to heart. Shame about Brand tho.
Moral majority in play here, papers have an agenda against Ross and Brand for some time, and this is their chance.
The fact that Sachs accepted their apology, acknowledged that as a comedian he knows things can go wrong easily at times and was ready to move on should be enough. But its not.
And now the satanic slut herself has got in on the act. €100 she’ll be on Celebrity Big Brother or that Jungle shite any day now.
As it was pre-recorded, they probably went a lot further than they would have if it was live. They were having a laugh and probably thought that the editor would bin it from the show. The stupid fooker who sent it out on air is the one who should be screwed for it.
As for Irish people being outraged… stupid cunts.
Brands radio show is made by his company Vanity Projects, so even though the Producer should have swung for it, Brand still has some responsibility here. Funny how only 2 people complained when it was originally aired.
Just reading Todayfm Ray Foley’s blog there and he had a fair amount to say on it. Can’t say I am a huge fan of Brand but to be fair Foley makes a valid point in what do people expect from him.
http://rayfoleyshow.blogspot.com/2008/10/brand-awareness.html
[quote=“manaboutdog”]Just reading Todayfm Ray Foley’s blog there and he had a fair amount to say on it. Can’t say I am a huge fan of Brand but to be fair Foley makes a valid point in what do people expect from him.
http://rayfoleyshow.blogspot.com/2008/10/brand-awareness.html[/quote]
yeah ray makes a few good points there. brand is a comedian after all
Georgina Baillie: Russell Brand was obsessed by my Fawlty Towers grandfather in bed
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 9:47 AM on 30th October 2008
Comments (40) Add to My Stories
The woman at the centre of the BBC obscene phone call scandal today revealed Russell Brand was obsessed by her Fawlty Towers grandfather.
Burlesque dancer Georgina Baillie described how the comic imitated Andrew Sachs’ character Manuel.
The 23-year-old added: ‘The fact that my grandfather was Andrew Sachs clearly tickled Russell. But I never thought he’d use it to cause such a lot of damage.’
‘No shrinking violet’: Georgina Baillie, pictured on her MySpace webpage, has revealed that Brand mimicked Manuel, the Fawlty Towers character played by her grandfather, during their fling
‘He seemed obsessed by the idea that he was close to Manuel’s granddaughter.
‘It was only a coincidence that he found out because Fawlty Towers came on his telly when we were together,’ she told The Sun.
She told how he pranced around the bedroom yelling ‘Que?’ and ‘I Know Nothing’ - well-known phrases uttered by Spanish waiter Manuel during the iconic TV series.
Brand, 33, has quit the BBC after he left lewd messages on Mr Sachs’ answer phone, describing how he had slept with Miss Baillie.
Jonathan Ross, who also took part in the obscene sequence, is currently suspended.
]Miss Baillie said she was particularly disgusted with the TV presenter as he was a family man who has three children.
‘In some ways he is the biggest disappointment because he has daughters,’ she said.
'I bet if you asked him he would say he’d lay down in traffic to defend their honour.
‘But what a hypocrite he is and what a shabby man he has turned out to be. Shame on him.’
More…Ross says ‘I fear I’m finished’ as BBC chiefs prepare to deliver judgement on ‘thoughtless and juvenile’ presenter
Lest we forget: Or what the BBC won’t let you hear
Georgina Baillie: I’m thrilled Brand and Ross have been suspended for the way they treated my grandfather
VIDEO: Russell Brand resigns from Radio 2 over ‘prank’ call to Andrew Sachs
How could a man of such high morals preside over the BBC’s descent into the gutter
Mark Thompson: A moral man and an amoral body
4,000 Mail readers complain
In the wake of the pair being suspended, Miss Baillie, who had a relationship with Brand, said that she was ‘thrilled justice had been done,’ and welcomed an investigation into the affair.
‘Let’s see what Ofcom choose to do about it. I don’t know how it’s going to go from here.’ she said.
‘I’m really happy with the investigation. Me and my granddad are both really happy because it could have damaged our reputation permanently.’
A source close to Miss Baillie revealed that she was privately ‘disgusted’ with Brand.
‘This wasn’t just a one night-stand, it was a relationship which lasted for over a year,’ he said.
‘She’s upset for herself and for her family.’
‘There’s nothing decent about Russell Brand’: Baillie says she’s horrified by her former love’s actions
Imitated: Andrews Sachs outside his home yesterday (left) and as Manuel in Fawlty Towers
Miss Baillie’s comments came as her pro-wrestler ex-boyfriend threatened to ‘give him a smack.’
Alex Shane, a 19-stone twice British champion heavyweight wrestler, said: 'I thought it was really out of order.
'I think Brand is used to getting away with these things.
'He needs to be taught some humility. He’s very quick-witted but shows a real lack of class. It’s gutter low.
‘Just give me five minutes in the ring with him!’
Heavyweight champion: Alex Shane, Georgina Baillie’s ex-boyfriend said he wanted to give Russell Brand a smack
In a frank interview with The Sun, Miss Baillie described how Brand was a flop in the bedroom, despite his reputation as a lothario.
Revealing that she slept with the star after their ‘lavish’ first date, she said: ’ I’m not going to go into detail about what happened there although I’m obviously no shrinking violet.
‘I will only say he’s a disappointment in the bedroom considering he has had so much practice’.
She also said that Brand was ‘clean freak’ and would ask her to use mouthwash before she kissed him.
The details of the affair will heap more public humiliation on Brand, who has always been proud of his ladies’ man image.
Yesterday he issued a public apology and resigned from the BBC after a storm of protest over the phone scandal.
Miss Baillie’s publicist Max Clifford said today that she was happy with Brand’s resignation from the BBC.
‘Russell Brand has done the right thing and his apology came across as genuine,’ he added. ‘He realises he’d made a total mistake.’
Miss Baillie’s latest interview about the Brand and Ross affair come in the wake of an initial stinging attack yesterday.
‘Russell Brand has embarrassed me by making a private relationship very public in the cruellest way imaginable,’ she said.
'He has betrayed me for a few cheap laughs and left my grandfather distraught.
'What happened between us was supposed to be private but he is clearly no gentleman.
‘Worst of all my poor grandfather had to confront the fact I’d slept with such a rat. What girl would ever want to have to tell her granddad who she has slept with?’
Under fire: Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross singing an apology to Andrew Sachs on Brand’s radio show
Miss Baillie has also spoken of her anger at Ross and Brand’s further broadcast in which they discussed breaking into Sachs’s home and performing a sex act on him. ‘They are beyond contempt,’ she said.
'They must be the only people sick enough to think that breaking into an old man’s house and sexually abusing him might be funny.
‘They are warped for what they have put me and my grandfather through.’
Miss Baillie - who dances under the stage name Voluptua in burlesque troupe The Satanic Sluts - said they also telephoned her in an attempt to cover their tracks.
‘They seemed to be trying to make a joke of it but I could tell that they were a bit concerned at the same time,’ she said.
‘I sensed they might have realised they had gone too far and were trying to limit the damage.’
Ross and Brand were both suspended yesterday, before Brand’s resignation, and filming for Friday Night With Jonathan Ross show was cancelled hours before it was due to be recorded last night.
Ross has apologised to Sachs personally and yesterday issued a public apology for his, ‘juvenile and thoughtless’ remarks.
Former heroin addict Brand had presented his Radio 2 show since November 2006 and was thought to be paid more than 200,000 a year by the BBC.
The BBC last night refused to discuss the arrangements for the termination of his contract, but reports suggest Ross has been suspended on full pay.
Jonathan Ross has been suspended without pay for 12 weeks. Nothing more than a joke in poor taste but the lunatics have taken over the asylum. And driven by those well renowned moral crusaders - The Sun and The Mail On Sunday.
I think that if he hadn’t slept with yer wan it would have been laughed off as a joke but the fact he did actually sleep with her made it less of a joke and more of a gloat.
Lets just say Bandage if I turn up at the christmas party and it turns out I’d given your sister a bumming in the past. You could be sure as fuck there would be no jokes about it, However on the other hand, if I turn up and I’v never seen her before, then its to be expected that a comment or two will be passed. (As I hear she is attractive enough and quite gamey)
I honestly wouldn’t give a fuck. But it’s funny when you see The Sun railing against the two boys invading yer wan’s privacy on one page and then publishing raunchy pictures of her on another.
Georgina Baillie: Russell Brand was obsessed by my Fawlty Towers grandfather in bed.
The woman at the centre of the BBC obscene phone call scandal today revealed Russell Brand was obsessed by her Fawlty Towers grandfather.Burlesque dancer Georgina Baillie described how the comic imitated Andrew Sachs’ character Manuel.The 23-year-old added: 'The fact that my grandfather was Andrew Sachs clearly tickled Russell. But I never thought he’d use it to cause such a lot of damage. He seemed obsessed by the idea that he was close to Manuel’s granddaughter. ‘It was only a coincidence that he found out because Fawlty Towers came on his telly when we were together,’ she told The Sun.She told how he pranced around the bedroom yelling ‘Que?’ and ‘I Know Nothing’ - well-known phrases uttered by Spanish waiter Manuel during the iconic TV series.
Yer wan is making hay it seems.
Your wan is obviously disturbed if she considers somebody imitating her grandfather to be healthy foreplay
Sordid details emerge about Brand girl’s racy past
After the belated apologies, resignations and pay cuts the dust is finally beginning to settle on the controversial ‘prank calls’ by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand.
Burlesque dancer Georgina Baillie has said she is ‘happy’ that the comics have been punished for their treatment of her grandfather Andrew Sachs.
As the woman at the centre of the scandal, 23-year-old Baillie gained overnight notoriety due to her relationship with Brand.
Now further details have emerged of the sordid past which surely would have attracted Brand to her in the first place.
It has been revealed that the brunette advertises herself as Mistress Voluptua - a dominatrix who charges clients 110 an hour for the dubious pleasures of being treated as her ‘slave’.
On a myspace page she declares: ‘Greetings unworthy creature, welcome to my dominion. Worship me in a fully equipped dungeon.’
In an interview with the Daily Mirror one of Baillie’s clients told how he was whipped and spanked by her during sessions at her London flat.
Referring to the ‘humiliation’ she said Brand’s actions caused her, he commented: ‘It’s unbelievable when you consider that she earns money by dressing as Mistress Voluptua and humiliating me as her sex slave.’
During his first session with Baillie the client described how he tidied her messy room, putting her underwear and stockings away.
Working girl: Baillie ‘whipped and spanked her client’
On another occasion he said Baillie wore a spiked dog collar. This can also be seen in photos of the dancer taken earlier this year.
In one of the shots she is dressed in PVC bondage gear and restrained by a male model who holds the dog collar.
In another she lies on her back while he has his fists at her throat.
Exactly. She’s grabbing her 5 minutes of fame and stuffing as much money in her purse as possible while it lasts. That was clear from the very moment she turned up to sell her story to The Sun with Max Clifford by her side. Stupid gimps complaining to the BBC worried about how upset and traumatised she must be when she’s absolutely milking it.
I actually think this article from yesterday is really good.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/1031/1225321584951.html
For those born after 1970, irony and humour became the sole cultural outlets, writes John Waters
FROM THE low-key coverage of the Russell Brand-Jonathan Ross controversy on this side of the water, you would think Ireland and the UK were two different cultures. Yet, on any given night, half the Irish audience watches British television. What happens there today will arrive here tomorrow, and what happened yesterday is, right now, the most happening thing in the land. This lends an anomalous tint to the comparative lack of interest among Irish media in one of the most shocking and salutary episodes in the history of the BBC. Perhaps the reticence arises because the controversial episode occurred on British radio, which, though once a vital lifeline, is now a marginal influence here.
It is difficult to summarise for the uninitiated ostrich the episode at the centre of this cultural tsunami, which has already provoked an intervention by Gordon Brown. Almost two weeks ago, on Russell Brand’s late-night Radio 2 programme, the presenter and his guest Jonathan Ross made a series of calls to the answerphone of the veteran actor Andrew Sachs, in the course of which Ross blurted that Brand had “f***ed” Sachs’s granddaughter. Brand went on to speculate about whether Sachs might commit suicide on hearing this news. Reading the transcript of the broadcast item, it is hard to comprehend that grown men could sink so low, never mind on national radio. Still more bizarre is that the show was pre-recorded two days before broadcast, and passed by an as-yet-unnamed BBC “senior editorial figure” who overruled appeals by Andrew Sachs to have it suppressed.
Merely to express outrage is to miss the point. Remarkably, although at the time of writing the episode has attracted nearly 30,000 complaints, just a handful of the two million listeners complained at the time. Brand has now accepted responsibility and resigned, but his initial “apology” provided an interesting insight into his mindset. “Sometimes,” he allowed, “you mustn’t swear on someone’s answerphone and that is why I would like to apologise.” He added that “it was quite funny”.
Russell Brand is an engaging comic talent who has created a persona suggesting a cross between Frank Spencer and Keith Richards, written in the style of Charles Dickens. For all his preening narcissism, there is something beguiling and deeply funny in Brand’s playing of himself as a Willy Wonka of the Pleasure Dome who can’t believe his luck.
Watching Brand and Ross in their occasional TV encounters, it is clear that Ross is utterly in awe, and perhaps a little envious, of the younger man. The transcript of the Sachs broadcast shows that this factor was rampant on that occasion, with Ross trying his hardest to out-Brand Brand. Ross was among the most talented of the 1980s TV generation, a witty and thoughtful facilitator who brought to television a sense of the ironic knowing of the first generation reared in front of the box. But he is now deep into middle age and desperately trying to make the right noises to hang in with the youth audience.
A similar syndrome afflicts his employer, the BBC, run by fogeys desperate to keep up with what “the yoof” are thinking, and employing people like Russell Brand to do, you know, whatever it is they do in order to prevent the haemorrhaging of younger audiences to the competition.
Brand belongs to a generation for which comedy is almost literally everything, and the laughter factor the only reliable test. The kinds of energies which previous youth generations expressed through music, art or protest have in his generation compressed into a single essence: a dissociated blend of ridicule and humour that lacks roots in any form of empathy. This comedy obsession arose in large part because this generation had its capacity for idealism usurped and frustrated by the couple of generations which preceded it, which refuse to countenance that anyone could be more “progressive” or engaged than themselves. Because those who emerged from the 1960s have been running everything, and refusing to provide space for challenging alternative perspectives, irony and humour became, for those born after 1970 or so, the sole cultural outlets for their natural transformative energies. The tone of detached, vacuous mockery that pervades the internet arises from this cultural stakelessness, now rendered artful by comedians like Russell Brand. On his television show a couple of years back, Ross asked Brand about the hurt humour can inflict: “I just see it as entertainment and try to divorce myself from moral obligation,” he replied.
The Sachs episode was an inevitable culmination of this logic. The point is to be “funny”, at any cost. There is in this, of course, an evasion of the essence of laughter, which is first and foremost a nervous response to encroachment on a taboo, a necessary social instrument for testing existing social instruments, but hardly a heroic calling.
For many of his own generation, Russell Brand is the closest to a hero they know. But the really interesting issue concerns the sabotage of their natural idealism by older generations now vacillating between managed outrage and indulgent giggling. They, still in control, have the last laugh.
Every time I turned the telly on last week this was on; it occupied nearly every news cast from the UK.
It was the “recorded apology” they broadcast that did them in; only one or two complained but when the Mail & the Guardian head lined the few complaints suddenly 30 thousand more flooded the BBC.
Here’s why:
the BBC is bloated with over paid presenters, producers and behind the scenes managers; Ross’s constent smug reminders on his radio show and talk show about how important and clever he doesn’t go down well when mixed with the 18 million three year handcuff he has from the Licence Payers.
Brand doesn’t give a rats arse about who he works for; he’s a pro at what he does. He produces his own show and sells it onto the BBC, and he surrendered that agreement; like a pro.
I believed his “to Camera” apology, it was decent honest and totally Russell Brand. And all the while Jonathon Ross; whose main employer is the BBC is refusing to comment. WANKER.
This was all about bringing Ross down a peg or two; no doubt about it.
I’d like to add my own comment; How dare Jonathon Ross openly mock a Comedy Institution like Manuel/ Andrew Sac’s; a man that probably never earned more than 250k in any one year of his life. Fuck off Ross; you front a great talk show; but try doing it without the 30 writers on Union rates!
Russell Brand is a writer and performer; that is what he does; he admitted he was silly and embarrassed; I’m still a fan. And for the record: Russell Brand is Christopher Hitchen’s natural successor.
Have the Guardian Sacked Russell Brand?
Nope, he’s writing away there still:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/nov/01/russell-brand
What a barmy, hysterical, cosmic week
The combined antics of Harry Redknapp, David Bentley and Diego Maradona have intensified this silly season
What a palaver! In a season that I’d already judged to be utterly barmy we have seen another week so hysterical and incomprehensible that I’m beginning to wonder if our country is in the grips of a cosmic fever.
Juande Ramos sacked from Spurs and replaced by Harry Redknapp - who has immediately turned the club around and taught David Bentley how to score football’s greatest ever goal. Against Arsenal. At the Emirates. In the nude. Insane. OK, Bentley was fully dressed but nudity could’ve made the event no more absurd, nothing could, it was a game from the mind of Ren Magritte: beautiful, charged, fraught and with an apple for a face. OK, it didn’t have an apple for a face but an apple for a face could have made the event no more absurd, nothing could.
Absurd like my enduring love for Harry Redknapp even though he is now installed at a club that I intuitively dislike, at the expense of the club I love and that he once played for. I’d always assumed that if Harry left Portsmouth it would be to return to East London; he a month ago eschewed that option only to upsticks and revolutionalise White Hart Lane. What a testimony to the indefatigable Redknapp charisma that this betrayal is but a blip to me, I regard it as little more than flirting. My affection for him is such that he could turn up drunk at my house at midnight, kick my cat, seduce my mother and fart Auld Lang Syne into my gaping, awestruck gob and I wouldn’t dare trouble him for a polo.
Elsewhere on our perfect sphere Maradona has been made coach of the Argentinian national side. He is a man whose supreme ability in one area ought naturally inhibit competence in all other areas or it’s just not fair. He can’t prosper as a manager after the skill he so profligately squandered as a player - anyone as good at football as Diego Maradona should spend the rest of their life immobile, unable to eat or speak without assistance. A gift so celestial ought be expensively purchased with torment and agitation - it seemed quite just when he became a tubby junky because he dabbled with the sublime, he confounded convention, laughed at normalcy, jinxed round Terry Fenwick and bedazzled Peter Shilton. “It was the hand of God,” he famously claimed in '86 against England. What a brilliant excuse for breaking the rules - “it was God’s fault, take it up with him.” I should like to see Fifa officials constructing their own Tower of Babel to issue a warning to the almighty for unsporting conduct. I wonder if later in life Maradona continued to site holy influence regarding his misdemeanours? “Why have you had that unflattering skinhead?” “It is the haircut of God.” “Diego, you haven’t paid your gas bill…” “I wish I could help - alas, that was the amenity - payment - negligence… of God.” “Signor Maradona you have hoovered up all our cocaine, that was supposed to last all week.” “I wish I could help - unfortunately it was the nose of God what done it.”
Of course the peculiar truth is that Maradona was right, he was a conduit for the divine, a vessel for a higher power, no one who saw that man play could doubt the presence of a universal force greater than mere man. Well, maybe Richard Dawkins, the ol’ stick in the mud, but Allah or Krishna or a really potent inter-galactic gas was present again at the Emirates when David Bentley, against his former club and all the odds, scored a truly sublime goal from 43 yards out.
In these moments sport is transcendent, more than art, more than theology or faith.
Witness Cristiano Ronaldo’s second goal against the Hammers at Old Trafford on Wednesday, Dimitar Berbatov demonstrated a talent bordering on the mystic, time appeared to bend as he flew Icarus-like down the flank, over the byline, trapping the ball before floating in a perfect cross to the equally touched Ronaldo.
In these rare displays, these athletic requiems, the player and the game issue an elation that I’ve struggled to find in a cathedral or a Caravaggio, so we endure the drab, rain-spattered Sundays, the financial indiscretions, the scandals and the heartbreak because instinctively we know that within this sport there is the potential for grace and redemption and incredible beauty. No matter how insane things become or how far from the truth we are led by histrionics and lies, the truly, objectively beautiful remains untainted.
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