The Daily Fail's reaction is balanced as normal.
Jonathan Ross returns to Radio Two with sick jokes about sex with a pensioner
Jonathan Ross risked the wrath of BBC executives on his return to Radio 2 yesterday by making crude remarks about sleeping with an 80-year-old woman.
Ten minutes after the live show began, Ross and his co-presenter Andy Davies talked about how they had spent the past three months, when Ross was suspended from the BBC.
Davies said that he had been doing some DIY at his house in Spain, and referred to an ‘older woman’ who lives nearby who ‘keeps trying to kiss me...she must be about 80, I reckon’.
Ross replied: ‘Oh God. I think you should, just for charity. Give her one last night, will you? One last night before the grave. Would it kill you?’
It also became clear yesterday that in the 35 hours between Ross’s Friday-night BBC1 chat show being recorded and broadcast, executives carefully edited the content to ensure the controversial host put across an appropriate balance of contrition and wit.
Ross was suspended without his £6million-a-year salary after he and comedian Russell Brand left obscene messages on the answerphone of
78-year-old actor Andrew Sachs during Brand’s Radio 2 show in October.
Last night Conservative MP Philip Davies, who sits on the Commons Culture Select Committee, said of his remarks about the elderly woman: ‘Everyone knows what Jonathan Ross is like, particularly now.
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Jonathan Ross arriving at the BBC's Western House Studios to present his first Radio 2 show since returning from a three-month suspension
'Certainly the BBC are well aware. If you employ Ross, this is what you can expect from him and this is what you’ll always get from him. My view is that he should have been sacked three months ago.’
John Beyer, director of pressure group Mediawatch UK, said: ‘It’s ultimately for BBC director-general Mark Thompson to say whether this sort of innuendo and suggestion is what he had in mind when he gave Jonathan Ross his last chance back in October. The BBC has to establish boundaries of acceptability.’
Ross arrived at the Radio 2 studios in Central London yesterday wearing sunglasses and a dark three-piece suit with brown leather cuffs. He carried a messenger bag by designer label Prada, costing about £210.
During his three-hour programme, he appeared to make light of the controversial subject of teenage girls – including his daughter – watching men kiss each other.
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Jonathan Ross with Russell Brand:The prank calls made to Andrew Sachs by the pair were "an act of broadcasting madness", said Director of BBC Vision Jana Bennett
As he interviewed fellow BBC presenter Graham Norton, who is starring in a West End adaptation of gay comedy La Cage Aux Folles, Ross said that his daughter, who is 16, was ‘very much into gay culture generally’.
He added: ‘I think, like lots of young girls, she likes seeing boys kissing, for some reason. They love seeing boys kissing.’
Sounding surprised, Norton asked: ‘Really?’
Ross said: ‘Yeah. It’s the big thing, Graham.’
A BBC spokesman said it had received 18 complaints about the show. And a further 166 people have protested to the BBC about Ross being chosen to present the Bafta awards next month.
In a statement, the BBC said: ‘Some viewers are unhappy that Jonathan Ross will be presenting this year’s Baftas. This will be his third year presenting the awards, and the decision to use him as the host was taken long before his suspension.’
BBC1 executives cut several crude remarks from his Friday-night chat show before it was broadcast.
The studio audience heard Ross tell his guest Tom Cruise, in response to the actor’s admission of a hectic schedule: ‘You should get yourself suspended. Russell Brand is in town tonight. Let’s go out in town and get suspended.’
Ross made several other references to Brand during the recording, and images of Brand appeared on screens, but his name or face were not deemed fit to appear in the version that was broadcast.
One audience member said: ‘I was amazed when I walked into the studio to see a huge screen suspended above the stage showing Jonathan Ross interviewing Russell Brand.’
Take away the 'daring' and it's just an old-fashioned showbiz plug show
So he’s back, the flop-haired popinjay – emerging on to his brothel-tinted set with a Sixties showbiz lope, blow-dried and trim in a maroon suit and nervous smirk.
You had to feel sorry for him. Well, a bit. Jonathan Ross’s trademark is – to quote Robert Robinson’s wonderful phrase about DJs – ‘behaving like a universal favourite on mere assumption’. Every move, every tic, every grin says: ‘Aw, c’mon, you have to love me.’
He must have been shaken in recent months by the revelation that a lot of people don’t. He has a gift: a quick brain and a talent for prattling cheek which forces guests to laugh or look stupid.
So they laugh, and everyone likes to see A-listers laughing. It makes up for the fact that they’re not telling you anything new.
But Ross’s problem has been a growing genital obsession normally found in under-sevens. So the love ebbed, to be replaced by irritation at his crazy salary and at the BBC for not reining him in.
On that strange night in October, the sound of a middle-aged married man egging on his oversexed younger colleague to cruelty was his downfall. Auntie BBC finally showed her teeth. Oh, and her scissors.
Since three national newspapers went to the trouble of infiltrating reporters into last week’s recording, we have a pleasing insight into what was cut.
We didn’t get to see him saying ‘f***’ to Tom Cruise, nor claiming that his right bicep is better toned thanks to what he does with that hand.
Nor did they leave in references to Russell Brand and the suspension, the suggestive sausage question to Stephen Fry, or a joke about Ross’s wife and a condom.
Fair enough. Studio audiences queue in the rain. You can’t really blame the BBC for putting on a smuttier show for a few dozen faithful than for the living-room.
But what we can judge, after this break, is how good it actually is. Take away the ‘daring’ and it is an old-fashioned showbiz plug show.
Ross is, beneath the cheekie-chappie veneer, a very sycophantic interviewer. His technique is to pour a quart of Oscarish treacle over his guests and then suddenly ask them about bodily functions and make amusing faces.
There has been a lot of absurd speculation about A-listers refusing to come on after the scandal. Oh, get real – it’s a mainstream showcase, all appearance fees and pre-agreed clips. This is showbiz. They’ll come.
And they’ll laugh, to prove they are sports. The smuttiest moment that escaped the censor was Ross laboriously working the subject round to farting, and asking Cruise whether he does it in bed with his wife. Cruise coped fine.
He does his own stunts – he can handle some weird Brit with a faecal obsession.
So far Ross has not been trusted near a female lest he proposition one, as he did Gwyneth Paltrow. But this week he has Glenn Close and Lily Allen.
Both of them, unlike Paltrow, have probably got enough bottle to slap him. Now that would be great telly.