Not many people had heard of The Mash Report before Rachel Parris took the piss out of Piers Morgan’s grovelling adoration of Combover Crybaby Donald Trump. But one other BBC presenter had looked in on the show, that being Andrew Neil, who declared it “thirty minutes of self satisfied, self adulatory, unchallenged left wing propaganda. It’s hardly balance. Could never happen on a politics show. Except this has become a politics show”.
This, together with his now infamous misogynist swipe at the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr, and the Beeb’s refusal to give her a right of reply after the alleged “man who bankrolled Brexit” Arron Banks defamed both her and Byline Media’s Peter Jukes live on The Andy Marr Show™, guaranteed that he would get a ritual roasting, and that Ms Parris would be the one to administer it. And so it came to pass.
Last night’s Mash Report featured Ms Parris as the show’s new “Impartiality Monitor”, with suitably inscribed sash to prove it. Plus the occasional reference to Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse), and the age-old question of whether Neil wears an Irish.
So began the roast. “Andrew Neil’s Tweet has inspired us to address this issue of bias. Part of the BBC’s remit … is to show due impartiality”. She called Neil “the right-wing, pro-Brexit BBC news anchor”, which he won’t like, but tough titty. His criticism of the show had come as “Part of a fair and balanced early morning Twitter tirade about Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr. He’s annoyed that Carole has exposed funding and electoral irregularities at the heart of the Leave campaign”. And there was more.
“And so, in a fair and balanced manner, he called her a Mad Cat Woman. This follows a year-long campaign of often misogynistic abuse directed at Carole, led by Leave EU supremo Arron Banks”. Then came the Barnet joke. “Unlike Nish [Kumar], Andrew Neil is always perfectly balanced. How else would that thing stay on his head?”
Rachel Parris gets ready to roast
And then the BBC itself got it in the neck, on impartiality. “In practice, it means giving a huge amount of airtime to fringe nutcases. Like Nigel Lawson, who was brought on Radio 4 twice to deny man made climate change, and given the same amount of airtime as the whole of science”. Anyone else in the crosshairs? You bet.
“And then we’ve got Steve Bannon, who’s a white supremacist, who has a lower hygiene rating than a kebab shop run by rats. He was recently given a platform on a BBC Scotland event. ‘Do you think people of other races are inferior? Pull up a chair, let’s have a valuable exchange of ideas. Maybe, just maybe, this time fascism will work out’”.
There was also a postscript. As Ms Parris said, Ms Cadwalladr “hadn’t been given a right of reply on the BBC for the misogyny directed at her by Andrew Neil. So we asked her for a statement”. And Brillo isn’t going to like it one bit. Nor, one suspects, is Lord Hall-Hall.
“‘Mad cat woman’ is the 21st Century version of calling a woman a witch. Next time Andrew Neil seeks to undermine the credibility of my reporting in order to shield his Tory mates who have been caught breaking the law on a truly epic scale, can I suggest he simply cuts to the chase and burns me at the stake”. Ouch!
Many a true word spoken in jest. I’ll just leave that one there.
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4 comments:
My own highly personal opinion is this:
Neil should be given a good verbal shoing at least three times each day and six times on Sunday. The fat, greasy, hypocritical, far right tory lard arse. All of it should be administered on live TV and radio in front of his like-minded broadcast media gauleiter "colleagues", male and female. The fellow is a shouty fraud of the worst type. A bad joke and a cringeworthy liar. A horrible product of the Awful Eighties. A placeman bully and coward secure in his employment because he knows he's doing exactly what his gobshite employers require.
All this should be done in pursuit of balance - and because of the damage his kind have inflicted on British culture. Nor should it stop until he croaks.
The Mash Report is seriously good TV. I've said it before on these very pages, but it's the closest the BBC get to an actual political programme these days. And although no one is safe (and that's as it should be) I think it's telling that they haven't fully joined in with the beeb's party line of claiming Corbyn is an anti-semite, like the other 'satirical' shows; Frankie Boyle's New World Order, Mock the Week, Have I Got News For You. Why? Because The Mash Report attacks those that truly deserve attacking.
Anon 12:00 - That is outrageous and totally over the top. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for suggesting anything of the sort.
Could it be repeated on every news report daily, with a weekend edited highlights show featuring a bevy of guest celebrities passing comment and awarding marks out of ten for style, presentation and audacity in a humorous fashion?
Anonymous 15:54.
That second paragraph is a brilliant idea. Inspired, even.
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