h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm in pre-mod again on every other BBC discussion board apart from, seemingly, this one. This REALLY infuriates me, as I consider my comments on the POV forum were legitimate, defensible, and fair comment concerning a certain BBC presenter. I wish I could go into more detail here about it, but this is the last BBC forum to which I currently have open access without going into pre-mod status first (ie, a moderator has to read and approve of my posting before allowing it to go onscreen, a process which could take hours and rather kills the point of having access to messageboards - ie being able to respond more or less immmediately ). So I don't want to draw attention to this without losing access to hootoo too.

This particular presenter and I have a backstory. I once complained formally to the BBC after having had the misfortune to listen to his programme - some of the content was too extreme even for me. I'm open-minded, I like to think I have a sense of humour, and I do appreciate an intelligently funny dirty joke. But this particular presenter pushed it too far: content of his show was obscene without being funny, it added nothing to my listening pleasure, it didn't inform or entertain, and the person concerned was being filthy for filthy's sake - just out of a juvenile desire to shock, or being gratuitous. So I discussed it with a couple of people, asked if I was oversensitive or if I was losing a sense of humour as I got older, they said "no, that should neveer have been said on radio" and supported me in complaining. So I sent in a formal complaint, and the folllowing weekend, I tuned into this person's radio show to see if he'd toned it down a bit and to give him another chance.

What he did was to talk about my complaint concerning his show - it had evidently irked him that somebody had dared to complain - and although I wasn't named, they stopped short of that, this presenter and his sidekick took it to pieces, and took the point of view that I was some sort of prudish Mary Whitehouse with too much time on my hands and no sense of humour. I thought - can he do that? Can they take a valid listener complaint that must have been passed to the production team for their comments, and then tear it to pieces, and be personally offensive to the person making the complaint (ie, me) on a live radio show?

He had, and as far as I was concerned, that made it personal. I wish I could name the presenter, but let's just say he does a weekly show which is lazy, ill-produced, amateurish, and which regularly takes the p out of people ill-equipped to defend themselves - ie, just bullying. How the hell this person got a BBC contract in the first place beats me.

So I recently posted to a thread on the Points of View messageboard - poor naive me, I thought this was the place where complaints and criticisms of BBC radio could be aired, but evidently not. The thread title was an invitation to suggest ways the BBC could save money and cut its expenses. So I suggested they discontinue this presenter's contract and save on one salary. I even provided good reasons.

Next thing I know, the post has been yikesed from POV, a follow-up post asking why the first post had gone (but without naming the presenter in question) is also yikesed, so evidently the POV mods cannot take criticism either, and then, about two hours ago, they put me on pre-mod. On all BBC discussion boards except this one.

So I wonder if, after my first bruising encounter with this person, he has his minions watching the boards for critical comment and has them hit the "complain here" button? He certainly seems to have powerful supportwers in the heirarchy, if the newspapers are to be beleived, and is very much the untouchable golden boy... so I'd better copy this entry to an off-board log before it goes too! I wish, I really wish, I could identify this egotistic monster here....

Sod it, this is where the problem started - i'm surprised it's still there! I have left this out of the main body of the journal entry and put it here as it should be your decision as to whether yo wish to click on the link or not. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio2/F1951568?thread=4399021 also http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F1951568?thread=4481514 http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F1951568?thread=4438684

Just in case they delete the whole thread...

Sunday 5th August, 9:21pm: postings 23 and 25 are still in limbo with no reply from the mods as to whether they are acceptable or not - they've still been referred upstairs for a judgement.

Fine, but do bear in mind who might be more in offence here: me, for posting to a discussion thread only likely to be read by hundreds, or Russell Brand (and his gopher), for belittling and misprepresenting a formal listener complaint on a radio show heard by? Let's be generous here. Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

You might discover that Posting 26 was a reworking of posting 23 with one or two phrases as valid comment, in that it's still up here.

I won't fight over the deletion of posting 25, as it referred to allegations made against Brand in the past, and I am prepared to acccept that he was cleared on all counts and has no further case to answer.