David Icke And Ignorant Pundits

Once upon a time, David Icke was just another BBC presenter, who you would see on sports programmes like Grandstand. But then he drifted first into Green politics, and later into full-blown wacko conspiracy theory nonsense, which he now does more or less full time. You know that when you let him in front of the camera, he’s going to come out with all sorts of stuff that is, shall we say, just a little Out There.

That appears not to have occurred to the people at London Live, who invited Icke on to pontificate about the Coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday evening. Icke took the opportunity to share his thoughts with the audience in both hands, with the result that Ofcom appears to have taken a dim view of the whole affair, as the BBC has reported.

“The UK's media watchdog has launched a formal investigation into a TV network's broadcast of an interview with conspiracy theorist David Icke about coronavirus. Ofcom acted after London Live screened the programme on Wednesday evening. The regulator received more than 40 complaints following the broadcast”. There was more.

“On Tuesday, YouTube deleted copies of a later interview with Mr Icke by the same host - which was embedded into the production company's site and hosted on YouTube's platform - and announced it would wipe any other videos that also falsely linked Covid-19 to 5G mobile networks … Mr Icke does not mention 5G by name in the interview broadcast by London Live, although at one point he does refer to an ‘electro-magnetic technologically generated soup of radiation toxicity’, which he claims has damaged old people's immune systems”. This is a District Line train. The next station is Barking.

But now a problem enters: if Ofcom dumps on London Live for allowing Icke to spin another conspiracy theory in his own inimitable fashion, for consistency’s sake, they need to clamp down on every other self-opinionated and demonstrably dishonest pundit allowed a platform by UK-based broadcasters. LBC host James O’Brien was already there.

“Tricky for Ofcom. David Icke is as qualified to talk about coronavirus as Nigel Lawson is to talk about climate science or Nigel Farage is to talk about 'trading on WTO terms'. Once you've opened the door to fact-free bluster in pursuit of clicks & hits, it's very hard to close”. Thus the problem: every Astroturf lobby group in the UK has a talking head ready for the studio with claims and opinions. And no real knowledge of the subject at hand.

Anyone from the TPA, IEA, CPS, ASI and PolEx talking about HS2, Crossrail, Northern Powerhouse Rail, or indeed anything on rails is likely not to know the subject from a hole in the ground. Same with anything to do with aviation: if Ofcom acts on Icke, bugger all point asking any of those pundits to talk about the Boeing 737 Max controversy.

Likewise almost all of the climate change naysayers, as O’Brien hints. So tough titty for James “Saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole, the GWPF, or indeed anyone backed by climate change denial pushers. Which would catch Brendan O’Neill and his pals at Spiked, so called because it should have been long ago.

All of which means that David Icke may have inadvertently done us a big, big favour - helping the gobby but vacant towards the broadcast exit door. Well done that man.

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