Never mind bias audits, Gordon’s BBC balderdash is an insult to us ALL
Are you thinking what she’s thinking?
Do you want to understand what is wrong with the BBC, why it is in crisis and why so many people are refusing to pay their licence fee? Look no further than Gordon Ramsay’s new game show, which began with much fanfare on Wednesday night.
For the next three weeks, Gordon Ramsay’s Bank Balance (BBC one) will be broadcast three times a week at prime time, a harsh punishment for those of us seeking a spark of fun and lockdown relief amid this purgatory of restriction and constraint.
‘Is this really on for a whole hour?’ I whimpered after 15 minutes of grown adults bickering with each other while trying to answer imbecilic questions and then balance plastic bricks on a shelf. Honestly. you’d get more thoughtful discourse and intelligent reasoning in a tumble-tots class.
Gordon (pictured) shuffles about awkwardly in a suit, exuding a whiff of shifty bailiff with a bad quiff, presiding over events like an undertaker trying to cheer up a corpse. ‘This is where it is going to go insanely intense,’ he shrieked hopefully when someone dropped a brick and I mean literally, not figuratively, which might at least have been more interesting.
‘Please pick up your stack,’ he said at another point, as if directing a waiter towards a pile of dirty plates. It was all very confusing. For everyone. ‘Can I just ask? If I put a five on it and it balances but we get the question wrong, do we still get the money?’ asked one contestant, as the nation fell into a collective slump of apathy and whispered ‘Who cares?’ to one another.
Gordon is terrible, the concept is terrible, the cheap set is terrible and the doltish contestants are terrible. (Q: Name a capital city north of London. A: Manchester.) Bank Balance might just about pass muster as a weekday teatime diversion when The Chase is on sabbatical and you find yourself locked in a basement and chained to a radiator with only a functioning television set for company. Instead, it has been served up in the top slot as a new star vehicle leading the evening schedules for the next month. It is almost insulting.
However, at least the guests on the first show hit the diversity jackpot, which is all that seems to matter these days. The first couple were a BAME brother and sister called Tobi and Tosin, while second couple Lindsey and Vicki were married lesbians from Bournemouth. New BBC boss Tim Davie will be pleased!
We all know that, for many years, the BBC has not stinted from its self-imposed mission to promote diversity on screen in all forms and at every opportunity — and for all the right reasons.
But this is about much more than the line-up on a quiz show. our national state broadcaster seems to be rushing towards increasing calamity and catastrophe both on screen and behind the scenes.
This week, new broom Davie has decreed that all BBC staff must complete controversial ‘unconscious bias’ training as part of the Corporation’s new ‘diversity and inclusion’ plans — despite the evidence that seems to suggest that anti-bias training doesn’t actually reduce bias, unconscious or otherwise.
YET as part of the drive to turn the BBC into a social utopia, Davie also wants 80 per cent of staff to declare their social class and hopes that 50 per cent of LGBT staff will be ‘open’ about their sexuality with their manager — but why the hell should they be? Surely your background and your sexuality are no one’s business but your own?
Declare your social class? Darling, this is Britain, a place where we can sniff out exactly where anyone is on the class spectrum by how they pick up an asparagus knife, or a sailor, or a napkin, or a skill, or even a plastic brick on a game show. We can read the social runes like anthropological experts. We are world class in this respect.
And apart from anything else, is it not insulting to employees, perhaps even a breach of their human rights, to make them ‘declare’ anything personal that does not directly relate to the workplace? And for what purpose is that avowal made, if not to foster even more social engineering and unconscious bias?
We all know there are plenty of areas of bias within the BBC, which still remains a throbbing nest of Lefty Remainers convinced of the superiority of their thinking. From panel shows to comedy shows, to quiz shows to Emily Maitlis, their hegemony is total, while their groupthink prevails.
HoW I long to see a sympathetic portrayal of a Conservative MP or a Tory supporter in a drama or elsewhere! yet in punchlines, in scripts, in Zoom interviews and in life, anyone even mildly right of centre remains the butt of the joke, the socially unspeakable, the cowpat on the BBC road to righteousness.
The BBC is tying itself in knots censuring staff about virtue signalling, fretting about impartiality and falling out with one another over assorted trans issues, which includes calling them ‘trans issues’ in the first place. A non-binary staff member questioned chiefs by asking: ‘What do you mean by the trans issue?’ Terrified management clarified that they hoped their shorthand choice of words had not caused offence — on and on it goes.
They seem to be much more concerned with what is going on with each other, rather than what is going on on screen. Which, at the moment, is a very substandard game show fronted by a foul-mouthed chef who can’t even whip up enough enthusiasm in himself, let alone the audience at home.
No wonder viewers are deserting the BBC in droves, with under-25s showing no interest in paying a licence fee, and many over-75s refusing to do so.
The BBC knows it needs to broaden its appeal to a wider range of people to halt the slide — but how and when? one thing is for sure, this Bank Balance is not going to put them in the black any time soon.