View Full Version : Golliwog jibe Carol axed by Beeb show
BBC chiefs axed Carol Thatcher from The One Show last night after she refused to say sorry for calling a tennis star a “golliwog”.
Ex-PM Lady Thatcher’s daughter — a roving reporter on the BBC1 show — had been overheard making the remark off the air.
She was chatting in the green room, or hospitality area, with presenter Adrian Chiles and several guests.
Bosses said she had “caused great offence” to those who heard the “wholly unacceptable comment”.
She was asked to apologise for making it — but she refused.
A BBC spokesman said: “Carol’s job on The One Show requires her to report on a wide variety of issues and to meet a diverse range of people. Many are unlikely to agree her comment was acceptable even as a joke.”
The spokesman added that because she had not said sorry “her position on The One Show is no longer tenable and there are no plans to work with her in the future on that show”.
Comedy star Jo Brand is said to have walked out of the green room in disgust when Carol made the remark about French-Congolese tennis player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
It came as she was discussing the Australian Open and Rafael Nadal’s opponent Fernando Verdasco, describing him as the one who “beat the golliwog” in the previous round.
Verdasco had played Tsonga — cousin of Premier League footballer Charles N’Zogbia — in the tournament quarter final.
Last night Carol, 55, who won I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! in 2005, would say only that she was “baffled” by the row.
Speaking on an intercom at her home in Southwark, South-East London, she said: “I am baffled by this. I don’t want to talk about anything.”
The new Beeb row comes in the wake of the Sachsgate storm involving Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand.
She's baffled by her racist comment? It's not that hard to understand that what she said is wrong.
Yes, what she said was wrong.
I don't know whether or not she should have been sacked - she was not on air, but she was at work. Would I be sacked for saying something like that in the coffee lounge? I don't know, but I would imagine a warning would be issued.
I do not consider myself to be racist, I work with a large number of different nationalities and I am careful not to offend people. I cannot say that my internal censor gets called upon very often as I do not use racist language at home either.
For older people, language (and what is acceptable or not) has changed a lot over the past 40 years. There was a program on TV when I was a child called Love Thy Neighbour. It was full of words like 'nig nog' that would never be used now - and these words were used to describe people! As a joke!
Then there was the Black and White Minstral Show, where a bunch of singers and dancers 'blacked up'.
Time change, language changes, acceptability changes. Sometimes people find change difficult. I am not saying that this makes bigotary acceptable - it is not, under any circumastances; however it must be confusing for some older people to suddenly find words that were okay 60 years ago are now taboo.
(Before anyone says Carol Thatcher is not that old I know she must be about 60 or something?)
Hold on.. so it wasn't on air.. yes in some companies you can get sacked for remarks like that but why make a big show of this when it could have been done behind closed doors??
Carol is 55 years old and would have grown up with the doll called Golliwog. I agree she should know better though than to use this terminology, she is a journalist and therefore familiar with what is acceptable these days and what is not. The BBC are bricking it because of the Ross/Brand affair and come down hard now to show their intolerance, whether it seems justified or not.
THE row over Carol Thatcher’s sacking by the BBC for a “golliwog” remark exploded yesterday.
The 55-year-old’s AGENT claimed she had been dropped from The One Show because of a personal vendetta.
But Beeb BOSSES insisted she was axed after repeatedly refusing to apologise and dismissed the idea that there was an “agenda” to get rid of her.
Carol, 55, was axed as a roving reporter for making an off-air comment about a tennis player in a hospitality green room after filming ended.
In a conversation overheard by several people, including co-presenter Adrian Chiles, she likened French-Congolese star Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to a golliwog.
But yesterday Ali Gunn, who represents Carol, said it was the BBC which should apologise for “condoning” the leaking of a private comment.
Ali said she knew who had complained and that there was a vendetta against the daughter of ex-PM Lady Thatcher, who was a critic of the BBC.
She added: “Nobody objected at the time. We issued a fulsome apology that was rejected.”
Adrian Chiles was said to have been “upset” by the remark and one guest, comedy star Jo Brand, walked out.
A BBC spokesman said: “Carol’s views were not those of people in the room and, quite rightly, they complained.”
di marco
05-02-2009, 10:38
i know what she said was wrong, but tbh she didnt say it on air so im not sure whether she should have been sacked or not
i know what she said was wrong, but tbh she didnt say it on air so im not sure whether she should have been sacked or not
I would have thought that a final warning would have been justified, but not sacking. I wonder why she refused to apologise? TBH that is probably what sealed her fate. I get the impression that if she had apologised she would have been reprimanded but not sacked.
di marco
05-02-2009, 14:07
i know what she said was wrong, but tbh she didnt say it on air so im not sure whether she should have been sacked or not
I would have thought that a final warning would have been justified, but not sacking. I wonder why she refused to apologise? TBH that is probably what sealed her fate. I get the impression that if she had apologised she would have been reprimanded but not sacked.
yeh maybe, although on the radio yesterday it said she had apologised so i dunno (maybe it was after she was sacked?)
di marco
05-02-2009, 18:57
The BBC has remained defiant over its decision to sack Carol Thatcher from The One Show.
The former Prime Minister's daughter was dropped from the programme after referring to a black tennis player as a "golliwog" in the backstage green room. Her agent Ali Gunn later urged producers to apologise for leaking a private conversation.
However, BBC One controller Jay Hunt defended the corporation's actions, saying that Thatcher had been given "ample time to apologise".
"What Carol decides to say in the privacy of her own home or in a private conversation with friends is one thing," she told Radio 4's Today programme.
"What she says in a green room space, when there are 12 people, in her capacity as a roving reporter for The One Show is a rather different thing."
Hunt claimed that Thatcher's comments were "deemed by a very substantial proportion of the public to be hugely offensive".
She added: "What I find sad about the entire situation is that we have given Carol ample opportunity to apologise for offence that was caused to key named individuals."
Thatcher, who won I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! in 2005, has only been dropped from The One Show and not the BBC as a whole.
Managers of a gift shop on the Queen's Sandringham Estate in Norfolk have apologised after they were found to be selling golliwog toys.
The dolls have now been withdrawn from sale and a spokesman said the managers "did not intend to offend anyone".
The news came after Carol Thatcher was axed from The One Show after referring to a tennis player as a "golliwog".
The BBC said on Wednesday evening that "a few hundred" viewers had complained about its decision.
The £9.99 golliwog toys had been on sale in the Sandringham shop for more than a year.
A spokesman for the 20,000-acre estate said: "The management of the shop have said they did not intend to offend anyone by selling this product and have apologised if any offence has been caused.
"The shop will immediately review its purchasing policy."
Buckingham Palace has stressed that the Queen is not personally involved in deciding what is sold in the shop.
Sandringham has been a retreat for British monarchs since 1862 and welcomes more than 250,000 visitors every year.
The news comes after a spokeswoman for Carol Thatcher accused the BBC of being motivated by animosity towards her mother, former prime minister Lady Thatcher.
Miss Thatcher was removed from her job as roving reporter on The One Show after she refused to issue an unconditional apology for her remark, made during an off-air conversation about the Australian Open tennis tournament.
A BBC spokesman said: "The notion that this matter is in any way linked to her family is just silly."
Miss Thatcher is now demanding an apology from the corporation over her treatment.
Carol Thatcher has not been banned from the BBC as a whole.
On Wednesday, her agent Ali Gunn said it was "absolutely outrageous" that her client's private conversation had been leaked to the public.
But the BBC spokesman rejected the idea that it was made in private.
"Carol made the remark in a busy green room with national celebrities and journalists present," he said.
TV chat king Paul O’Grady has defended Carol Thatcher after she controversially called a tennis player a “golliwog”.
But he blasted the Royals for using racist nicknames.
Scouser Paul, 53, said Carol, 55, was wrong to make the remark, which saw her fired from BBC1’s The One Show.
However, he insisted she was not racist. He said: “I’ve met Carol and she’s lovely, she really is. I don’t believe she’s a racist.
“But she shouldn’t be saying things like that. She needs a good slap on the wrist.”
He insisted Prince Harry and Prince Charles ought to be ashamed after they called friends “Paki” and “Sooty”.
Paul said: “For God’s sake, what’s up with these people? There are certain words you don’t say — in public or private.
“Re-educate yourself. There’s no excuse. You don’t think like that, never mind talk like that.
“Their friends might say they are OK with it, but they shouldn’t be.”
Paul also told how he thought comics Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were “wrong” for their phone prank on Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs.
But he said it had turned telly into a “a bit of a witch hunt”.
The Channel 4 chat show host also gossiped about Richard and Judy’s New Position — the show which has plummeted to just 8,000 viewers on cable channel Watch.
Paul — whose former ITV programme thrashed the pair in the ratings when they were on C4 — was stunned when told the figures by TV Biz.
He gasped: “You’re joking? No! It must be hard for them.”
The star, born in Birkenhead, Merseyside, even had a chinwag about Britain’s 13-year-old dad Alfie Patten. Paul, who has daughter Sharyn, said: “I was a 17-year-old dad so glasshouses, stones and all that. But I don’t envy them.”
Paul is now writing a second autobiography after his first, At My Mother’s Knee, sold a whopping 700,000 copies.
He said: “If it had sold 10,000, I’d be happy. I think this one will take us to the end. The first was meant to, but I got carried away and wrote too much.”
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