Kelvin McFilth Throws Gob In Ring

The contest to become BBC Chairman has not so much hotted up as fizzled out: we were told that alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson wanted former Telegraph editor (and keeper of the Thatcher flame) Charles Moore for the role, perhaps because he knew nothing about broadcasting, except that he didn’t care for it. But, sadly, Moore soon tired of the idea, declaring it beneath his station.

This is not a serious contender ...

As Henry Mance of the FT mused, “What does it say about Boris Johnson that his preferred pick for BBC chair lasted a week?” How come? Mance had that covered, too. “This is brilliant - Charles Moore, who thinks the licence fee should be slashed, also apparently wanted to be paid at least £280,000 of licence fee payers’ money to be BBC chairman”. Current chairman David Clementi is paid just £100,000 a year.

So that was one Polecat dead cat off the table. Who would care to sling another one on? Was there a yet more preposterous candidate waiting in the wings? It seems there was, and a suitably desperate one. Desperate enough for the application to come from deeply unpleasant former Sun editor Kelvin McFilth. He claims to be serious.

As iNews has reported, “The former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie has entered the race to become chairman of the BBC. A vocal critic of the BBC and a close ally of Rupert Murdoch, MacKenzie said he was ‘very confident’ that Downing Street would favour his application”. So this could be another Polecat dead cat. Or could it?

“However any move to appoint the controversial MacKenzie, whose column for The Sun ended after he compared the footballer Ross Barkley, who is mixed-race, to a gorilla, would prompt outrage at the BBC … He was accused of Islamophobia after complaining that it was inappropriate for a Muslim Channel 4 News presenter to wear a hijab to cover the 2016 Nice terrorist attack”. He’s an unreconstructed racist bigot, then.

So what would Kel bring to the Beeb, other than racism, bullying, intolerance, sexism, homophobia, and an unparalleled ability to alienate large sections of the population? “As BBC Chairman, MacKenzie said he would sell-off Radio 1 and Radio 2 as well as BBC One and BBC Two. The £157.50 licence fee would be halved to make the BBC more competitive with the monthly subscription charged by Netflix”. Yeah, right. Do go on.

... it's cover for someone else

“Gary Lineker’s new £1.35m a year BBC contract would be ripped up. ‘He can go and eat crisps for a living or work for BT Sport,’ MacKenzie said”. Add petty jealousy to that list. But this is not the real Polecat dead cat: that is revealed at the end of the article.

“Sir Robbie Gibb, a pro-Brexit former BBC executive who ran Theresa May’s Downing Street press operation, was tipped as the new front-runner after previous favourite Charles Moore, the former Telegraph editor, withdrew his interest”. Yes, Gibb was so successful in running Treeza’s PR, and so good at cursing BBC News and Current Affairs, that he wants to come back and finish the broadcaster off completely. Kel is just a distraction.

And neither of them is fit to be paid £100k a year. I’ll just leave that one there.

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