Out of the blue: Trouble at the BBC

At last. After weeks of nothing but mystifying talk of things like short-selling and bundled loan packages, a story every message board contributor, headline writer, and even MP could grasp. It had everything, but most of all it had novelty. No one had ever thought of broadcasting two overbearing younger men bullying an older one before, but on 17 October 2008 Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross broke the taboo. The listening public's reaction was largely indifference. Of an estimated 400,000 audience, two made a complaint, 399,998 did not. The programme seemed destined to be a mere catalogue number in the archives; but then, fate – and a host of combustible circumstances – intervened. The big boys' playground talk became a full-fledged BBC cause célèbre. The press rose in multi-page outrage, more than 30,000 Britons joined them, ministers – Prime, Cabinet, junior, shadow and religious – spoke out, a director-general was recalled from holiday, heads rolled, and even broadcasting schedules – those hymn boards of the secular society – had to be changed. It was Extraordinary. It was Shocking. But, above all, it was Comprehensible. This, then, is the story of how it all happened, of how the nation's highest-paid broadcaster became The Most Hated Man In Britain, and of how Andrew Sachs Became A Household Name Again.

Unavoidably, this account contains strong language and scenes of an adult nature, and, since these are its central subject matter, it is as well to get them precisely established at the outset. The programme was The Russell Brand Show, recorded for Radio 2 in the early afternoon of Thursday 16 October. This self-consciously anarchic two hours of radio was due to have two guests: Ross, who could make it; and the 78-year-old actor and voice-over specialist Andrew Sachs, who could not. Host and guest decided to call Sachs's phone (number supplied by BBC officials). He did not respond, so they spoke instead to his answer phone. [First call] Ross: "He fucked your granddaughter! (laughter).... If he is like most people of a certain age he has probably got a picture of his grandchildren when they were young and innocent by the phone. So while he is listening to the message he is looking at a picture of her when she was about nine on a swing...." [Second call] Brand: "Andrew... I am phoning to ask if I can marry – that's right, marry – your Georgina, the granddaughter." Ross: "And I would like to be a page boy...." Brand: "... I wore a condom." [Third call] Brand: (Singing) "I had sex with your granddaughter. But it was consensual and she wasn't menstrual...."

There was more, much more, as we shall see, but those were the essentials of what was broadcast. Among those listening was Miles Goslett, who was not only surprised by what he heard, but taken aback that by the middle of the following week no breath of public criticism had been uttered. He was in a position to alter this, working as he did for the Mail on Sunday, something of a specialist at raising public kerfuffles. The MoS rang Sachs's agent, Meg Poole, she and the actor listened to a tape of the broadcast, and on Thursday 23 made a complaint by email to Lesley Douglas, controller of Radio 2. Miles Goslett had his story.

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The BBC responded by sniffily saying there were only two complaints and they were unaware of Sachs's objections. Its corporate antennae as dull as ever, it failed to sense that what it had here was not just two known professional lads doing a bit of effing and blinding on a late night show, but a flatbed truck of controversy which could be loaded with whatever freight newspapers and aggrieved licence-fee payers cared to heap on it. And there was no shortage of material. There was the crude language, the bullying tone of the calls, and the harassment of an elderly man with details of a sexual encounter with his granddaughter. This much was fact. Then there was the issue of how such content could have been approved for broadcast, and who did so. This much was conjecture. And then there was the burdensome cargo of resentment towards Ross (£6m a year), Brand (a Middle England baiter), and the BBC, publicly funded punchbag of the conservative classes. This much was prejudice. By Monday, under the weight of all this, the truck began to roll down the tracks. By Tuesday, with complaints rising past the 10,000 mark, it was a runaway. And, in its path, shielding themselves behind dark glasses in the autumnal London gloom, were Brand and Ross, unaware, even at this stage, that this whole thing could run them down.

The BBC, having gone through the disdainful phase and announced an inquiry to match that of Ofcom, was now in panic-struck, no-comment mode. Calls to Radio 2's press office were passed hastily up the food chain to corporate spokespersons, who, by Wednesday, were refusing to respond to even the most prosaic questions. The Independent on Sunday wanted to discuss with them the fact that Brand's show was made by his own production company, Vanity Projects. Who, then, had editorial control? And we wanted to ask about Nic Philps, the show's young producer. He was a psychology graduate at Sheffield University (where he attended one course in the journalism faculty – called, of all things, "Current Debates in Broadcasting") and worked as producer for Shaun Keaveny on 6 Music. Why, we wanted to ask, did the BBC (or Vanity), think it likely that a 25-year-old novice would be able to exert editorial control over egos the size of Ross and Brand? No comment. In triplicate.

Over, then, to Brand's handlers, John Noel Management. Word had come in that, only a few weeks ago, the production staff of the show had been dismissed. "No comment." Was it true that the Sachs broadcast was only Philps's second time "in charge" of the show? "He has been helping out," came the reply from the PR, "for the last 18 months, on and off in various capacities." Had he been producer for just two shows? "No comment."

With the BBC paralysed pending an internal inquiry by Tim Davie, director of audio and music, revelations started to flow in from elsewhere. Sachs said he spoke to Philps before the broadcast, told him he objected to the messages, and was under the impression they would not be broadcast and that a later appearance would be arranged. Philps nevertheless included the material, and filled out a BBC form that required him to list for a senior executive any potential trouble areas such as bad language. Ross sent an apology and flowers to Sachs. Georgina, to the great disappointment of any Daily Mail reader imagining this besmirched innocent in confirmation dress and braids, turned out to perform with a dance troupe called Satanic Sluts Extreme under the name of "Voluptua". She had slept with Brand, and was now, metaphorically, in bed with Max Clifford. Even the old press agent was taken aback on Friday, when the Daily Mirror claimed she was a £110-an-hour dominatrix.

By now the complaints were climbing towards, and then beyond, 30,000. The objections boiled down to this: the BBC, an organisation which once had a book of guidelines that proscribed even the very mention of honeymoon couples, had allowed to be broadcast two fashionable performers bullying an elderly actor widely loved for his performances as Manuel in Fawlty Towers by shouting, singing, and giggling over sex acts with his granddaughter. And, as several newspapers pointed out, AT PUBLIC EXPENSE, TOO! By Wednesday afternoon, you could hardly move in Britain without hearing a homily on the brutalisation of public discourse. Much more of this, you felt, and the national anthem would be replaced by the sound of a middle-aged choir tut-tutting along to the signature tune from The Archers.

Unless, of course, you were young, or wanted to appear so. A fissure was opening up in responses to the affair which was largely along generational lines. A number of Facebook groups were started to free the Radio 2 Two. On one, Sian Gee wrote: "The guys were just having a laugh ... and yes they took it to far ... but who hasnt taken a joke to far? ... IT WAS A JOKE!!! lol it makes me mad that ppl are acting like its the worst thing ever ... this is what these two do ... they make inappropriate jokes!" On another, Nikki Lucas wrote: "Its absolutely ridiculous, its making me so angry! Its just a bloody media frenzy fuelled by 22,000 retired Radio 2 listeners that have nothing better to do than join in the complaining bandwagon. I bet most of them haven't even listened to the podcast, their just old grumpy twats that dont get modern humour."

Here, in the differing reactions of young and old was the dilemma the BBC created for itself when it decided (in the interests of audience rather than remit) to take fuddy-duddy Radio 2 and make it the confused station it now is, with Wogan of a morning and hellraisers such as Brand late at night. Brand has a long record of taste-free comedy, largely delivered in arenas that specialise in that. Ross is different. Garrulous on his chat show to the point where guests are often reduced to highly-paid members of the audience, he has a fixation with sex that suggests a development that has not so much been arrested, as placed in permanent custody. He once asked David Cameron if he had "wanked" at the thought of Margaret Thatcher, and, in an unbroadcast segment of the Brand show, had the unusual idea of suggesting the pair visit Sachs and masturbate him to say sorry. The tape reveals him as the instigator, prompting Brand to go off on riffs, that were, at times, funny. Ross was like the older boy who suggests the gang burn down the school but who leaves the match-striking to someone else, confident that his position as captain of cricket will save him from expulsion.

Brand was the first to crack, resigning his Radio 2 show on Wednesday. Ross issued an effusive apology, grandly claiming that he had been reserving this for his Friday night TV show. And then, on Thursday, a flurry of events: director-general Mark Thompson met the BBC Trust, Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas resigned, and Thompson, having previously denounced the broadcast's "gross bad taste", suspended Ross for three months without pay. But some things Thompson couldn't say. Five days after the story had broken, the BBC still couldn't explain what, fundamentally, had gone wrong. What had Philps flagged up? Only bad language, or the harassment of Sachs and the actor's objections? Who then rubber-stamped his qualms? Finally, on Friday, came some enlightenment. In an interview with Nicky Campbell on Five Live, Radio 2 presenter Paul Gambaccini confirmed what we had suspected: Campbell: "I hear he [Brand] had five or six producers and whenever one said no to him, he went and got him or her sacked?" Gambacinni: "You heard accurately." He said that Brand was Lesley Douglas's "pet", and that "she let him get away with so many outrageous things".

So there we have it, for now. The celebrities were allowed to be bigger than the institution. They were, in effective day-to-day terms, beyond supervision. The Story Everyone Could Grasp finally became The Story Everyone Could Understand. Even, perhaps, in time, the BBC.