Yet another sexist smear by the BBC
PEERLESS BBC presenter Anita Anand (Any Answers, R4, Saturdays) was astonishingly told not to turn up for work last weekend. Some bloke took her place in the 2pm phone-in slot that follows Any Questions.
Why? Because Anand is a woman. A woman who has dared to support the campaign for equal pay between men and women working at the Beeb.
On November 9 last year she tweeted the following: “It is fair and it is a legal requirement. Equal pay for equal work. This applies to all employers and all women.”
Not exactly banner-waving, incendiary stuff. But knowing that Any Answers would inevitably take listeners’ calls on the gender pay gap at the BBC some pompous power-wielding apparatchik decided to stand Anand down last Saturday. Impartiality rules state that journalists and presenters who have spoken out on issues cannot then take part in on-air discussions about the same subject.
Really? Even if they’re truisms? What if Anand had “spoken out” about famine in Ethiopia? Or CAPABLE: Anita Anand on Radio 4 I WAS really upset this week to learn that actor John Mahoney has died. He played Kelsey Grammer’s dad in Frasier, deservedly regarded as the best TV sitcom ever.
We interviewed John once. He was such a lovely man. Although he went to America as a young man to try his luck as an actor, we quickly bonded over his origins – he actually grew up in my neck of the woods, Withington in Manchester, and was born in Blackpool.
Mahoney had a deep gift of inspiring affection: Kelsey Grammer says he loved him. In fact, although pretentious Frasier Crane and his hilariously uptight brother Niles were the stars of the show, it wouldn’t have worked without their crusty old blue-collar dad Martin and his little dog Eddie.
John loved that dog but much to his sadness Moose, the pooch who female genital mutilation in the Middle East? Or any other issue where the facts are broadly uncontested here in the UK? The gender pay gap at the BBC is something the corporation itself accepts is a real problem. So why can’t one of its woman broadcasters say so and later host a phone-in that covers the subject? I’ll tell you. Because she’s a woman. If she was called Andrew Anand and had tweeted about the pay gap, no one would have turned a hair. He would have been on air, no questions asked. Anand is a consummate professional (she handles an amazingly wide variety of live callers every week with grace, patience and calm good judgment) who would have hosted a discussion on the BBC’s gender pay gap impartially and without prejudice. It is deeply patronising to her to presume otherwise. But some twitchy Beeb jobsworth did. As Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said last week: “What the BBC is saying is that none of the victims of pay discrimination can be trusted to discuss the issue impartially and fairly. It smacks of some sort of throwback to the days of Soviet Pravda.” Da to that, mate. Da to that.
faRewell to a much-loved man
played Eddie, died first. Frasier was just wonderful TV.
We must always treasure it. Along with Friends it was the show I watched my kids grow up with.
RIP, John.