Fury at kids’ Brexit show that even BBC’s own star damns as ‘anti-British’
THE BBC has provoked outrage by screening an ‘anti-British’ children’s programme on Brexit Day.
Hosted by Left-wing comedian Nish Kumar, Horrible Histories Brexit suggested Britain had historically failed to produce anything of note, relying instead on imports.
Amid a chorus of protest, one of the BBC’s broadcasters launched a stinging attack on the show.
Leading political commentator and BBC presenter Andrew Neil last night called it ‘anti-British drivel of a high order’ and asked: ‘Was any of the licence fee used to produce something purely designed to demean us?’
Kumar begins by introducing a series of CBBC ‘comedy’ clips. In one sequence, Queen Victoria is labelled ‘foreign’ and portrayed as a dullard who is shocked to discover that sugar, tea and cotton do not come from Britain.
Her manservant sings a song suggesting Victorians only had access to these goods because of slavery and imperial might. Yet slavery was abolished four years before Victoria came to the Throne.
He sings: ‘Sugar is Caribbeanimported. For sugar in your cup of tea, slavery’s been supported.
‘I know it’s wrong, your Majesty, but slaves in Africa worked hard in fields of sugar cane to sweeten up your char.’
The Queen and her servant then sing: ‘British things, British things, I thought that they were many.
‘British things, British things, afraid there’s hardly any.’
The servant then adds: ‘Your Brit
things are from abroad and most are frankly stolen.’ The song describes Victoria as ‘foreign’ and concludes: ‘British things, British things, there are none we declare.
‘All our favourite British things seem to come from elsewhere.’
Historian Andrew Roberts described the ten-minute show – released on Friday on BBC iPlayer to coincide with the departure from the European Union – as ‘a stream of bigoted hatred directed against this country’. He added: ‘These sneering attitudes to all things British should not be forced down the throats of children by the BBC.’
Kumar, who hosts the comedy satire show The Mash Report on BBC2, begins the show by talking sarcastically about Brexit.
In a mocking tone, he says: ‘Here we are on the verge of Brexit.
‘The UK is leaving the European
Union. You might not have heard much about it because things have been so quick and so smooth. I mean, if anything, it’s going too well. I thought as we stand on the verge of this historic moment we would look back at what Europe has done for us.’
The film also has sketches about several European nations, including France, Italy and Germany.
Mr Roberts, the author of Churchish ill: Walking With Destiny, said: ‘No one has ever suggested that sugar, cotton and tea were grown domestically. The idea there are hardly any British things ignores the Industrial Revolution, the English language – which is spoken in the Caribbean and India – English common law, which is practised in the Caribbean and India, and the abolition of the slave trade four years before Queen Victoria came to the Throne.’
The row came as a BBC reporter faced criticism for describing the Brexit crowds celebrating in London on Friday night as ‘very white’.
Geeta Guru-Murthy, whose younger brother is Channel 4 presenter Krishnan, told one Brexit
‘A stream of bigoted hatred’ ‘Should not be forced down children’s throats’
supporter: ‘It’s a very white crowd mostly.’ Twitter users said GuruMurthy should be sacked, while many Asian and black Brexit supporters who had celebrated in Westminster posted selfies on Twitter. One wrote: ‘The BBC are racist against white people.’
Another said: ‘Just a group of “white racists” celebrating Brexit last night... Oh wait, Brexit doesn’t make you white or racist. If only the BBC and Channel 4 knew this.’
Of the Horrible Histories film, Mail on Sunday columnist Piers Morgan wrote on Twitter: ‘Why is the BBC paying nasty pieces of work like Kumar to trash Britain like this? An outrageous and shameful abuse of public money.’
The BBC said: ‘The video is lighthearted and not anti-British. We are a nation, like most others, that enjoy a patchwork of traditions and culture from other countries. Our children’s audience are able to take these things as intended.’
ALMOST everything that is wrong with the BBC is contained in an unfunny skit on CBBC, supposedly about Brexit and presented by Nish Kumar, who is said by some observers to be a comedian. Whether this is actually so remains in serious doubt. One recent audience booed him off the stage.
The item has virtually nothing to do with Brexit and is simply an excuse to mock British patriotism. It is aimed at children between six and 12 years old. Many of them might find it too juvenile. But its most witless segment features Queen Victoria, singing a duet with a footman, during which he informs her that tea, sugar and cotton are not British (as she oddly seems to think) and nor is she.
There are, of course, the obligatory heavy-handed mentions of slavery, empire and war, the only things about our past that the BBC is interested in.
First of all, it seems odd that an organisation which claims to be so opposed to xenophobia should make so much of the German origins of the British Royal House of Hanover. Why is it acceptable to sneer at them, when it would mean instant dismissal for anyone at the BBC to sneer in the same way at others for their migrant origins?
And then there is the utter ignorance of our actual history. At the end of the duet, the words ‘British things! There are none, we declare!’ are sung.
This is astoundingly untrue. If freedom under the law is a ‘thing’, then Britain can certainly claim to have pioneered it, from Magna Carta to jury trial. If the organised study of science is a thing, then the Royal Society, that great nursery of knowledge and inquiry, is the oldest national scientific institution in the world.
The agricultural and industrial revolutions both began here, pioneered by British inventors – a few examples are Jethro Tull’s seed drill; Abraham Darby’s new method of making iron; James Hargreaves’s spinning jenny; Edmund Cartwright’s power loom; and Henry Bessemer’s revolutionary steel process. And this is not even to mention the great railway pioneers, among them James Watt and George Stephenson.
In more modern times, countless millions owe their lives to Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin.
Then there is the abolition of slavery – a horror which the programme suggests Queen Victoria knew and cared nothing about. In fact, Caribbean slavery was finally abolished by Britain in 1838, in the second year of her reign. And it was Queen Victoria’s mighty navy that led the fight to stamp out the international slave trade. There are plenty of ‘British things’, for those who are interested.
Why does the BBC seem to loathe this country so much that it cannot even recognise its great and inspiring past? If it carries on in this way, it may find itself left behind by the new independent future that began at last on Friday night, which it did so much to try to prevent.
Three hours? That’s a licence to bore...
THE heart sinks at the prospect of a three-hour Bond adventure, part of a worrying and pretentious new fashion for interminable films.
Add in the trailers and the advertisements, and the whole thing will last as long as a flight from London to Moscow. No Time To Die? More like ‘too long to bear’. We British are tough, but even 007 needs to go to the loo sometimes, and we don’t have his trained endurance.