RUSSELL BRAND - TOP BBC PERSONALITIES OUSTED

TOP BBC PERSONALITIES OUSTED

Russell Brand, best known in the U.S. for his performance as a narcissistic British rock star in Forgetting Sarah Marshall , and Jonathan Ross, the $1-million-a-week host of the long-running BBC primetime talk show Friday Night With Jonathan Ross , were suspended by the BBC today (Wednesday) as a scandal over an on-air prank escalated into a national uproar. The publicly supported broadcaster had already pulled Ross's television show and Brand's radio show after reportedly receiving more than 18,000 complaints from the public about the prank, in which the two had left messages on the answering machine of actor Andrew Sachs claiming that Brand had slept with Sach's granddaughter. The messages were played on Brand's radio show. Sachs is best known for his role as the Spanish waiter Manuel in the classic BBC comedy series Fawlty Towers . In a statement, the BBC said that the two were being suspended for a "gross lapse of taste." BBC Director-General Mark Thompson, who had remained silent on the controversy since it erupted on Monday, also issued a formal apology, saying that the stunt had "caused severe offense." The incident is also being investigated by the BBC Trust, the governing body of the BBC, and OFCOM, the U.K.'s broadcasting watchdog. Ross and Brand have each apologized for what Ross called a "stupid error of judgment." Noting that the program was prerecorded, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Britain's spiritual leader), told the London Times , "I'm astonished that any editor gave the go-ahead to this disgusting and pathetic infantilism. Have we really got to this point of humiliation as entertainment?"

30/10/2008