News Hour believes it has stumbled upon a conspiracy of the highest order, cooked up by the BBC to save cash in these troubled times. The corporation has clearly developed some kind of drug, deliverable in capsule or powder form, that it has introduced to into food for performers engaged in contracts signed in rosier times – who are now seen as ripe for the chop.
The latest to fall was national motormouth Jeremy Clarkson, who pronounced the Prime Minister a ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’. Before him, Carol Thatcher branded a tennis player a ‘golliwog‘ and Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand made unpleasant phone calls to a pensioner who played an idiotic Spaniard in ‘Fawlty Towers’.
‘They expect results‘
It is a neat double fix – ideally, the corporation gets to terminate the rogue operators and replace them with less costly imitators, those younger and more easily cowed by censor chiefs. As they grow older, becoming better paid and more gregarious, the BBC will once again infuse its performers with naughty drugs, and the poor devils will disgrace themselves in front of recording devices. Thus there is introduced a natural salary cap for entertaining out of the public purse – the outcasts will be forced out into the notoriously ruthless private sector. Should they somehow remain, the storm of publicity created for their shows will send ratings through the roof. It’s a win-win.
The downside is that we will have fewer ‘national treasures’ from the BBC. Some other network must take up the challenge of creating the David Jasons and Judi Denches of tommorow. Takers?
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 