The BBC is hoping that its decision to suspend Jonathan Ross for 12 weeks will end the crisis caused by crude prank phone calls he made with Russell Brand on a radio show, media commentators said on Friday.
While newspapers generally welcomed the corporation’s action against Ross, one of the BBC’s highest paid presenters, the decision by Lesley Douglas, the head of Radio 2, to quit over the furor was greeted with sadness.
The BBC acted on Thursday after the “deplorable” messages left on actor Andrew Sachs’ phone drew 30,000 complaints, criticism from Prime Minister Gordon Brown and media condemnation.
Following an emergency meeting between BBC Director-General Mark Thompson and the BBC Trust, the BBC’s independent governing body, Ross, 47, was suspended without pay but kept his job for what Thompson described as his “utterly unacceptable” behavior.
However, Thompson said it was a “final warning” for Ross, who has been suspended for 12 weeks.
Douglas, who was appointed controller of the music and chat station in 2003, then made the decision to quit.
The prank had already led to the resignation of Brand, 33, a flamboyant comic who has branched out into acting in Hollywood films including the romantic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
The row erupted after the duo joked Brand had slept with the granddaughter of 78-year-old Sachs, who played Spanish waiter Manuel in the cult comedy series Fawlty Towers.
They also joked that Sachs might kill himself after hearing messages left on his phone.
Newspapers said the BBC had taken far too long to take action and Douglas was a victim.
The new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, debuted in Britain on Friday to record one-day ticket sales of US$8 million, distributor Columbia Pictures said on Saturday. The total tops Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the previous record holder with an opening day haul of US$6.5 million in 2005, and it also beat the US$4.72 million first-day total for the last Bond flick, Casino Royale (2006), Columbia said.
Fashion icon Victoria Beckham is the spokeswoman for the new Armani fashion house lingerie line following in the footsteps of husband David Beckham, who also appeared in the fashion house’s underwear campaign.
The company said Friday that Beckham will debut in the spring-summer 2009 advertising campaign of Emporio Armani women’s underwear.
Giorgio Armani called the former “Posh Spice’’ of the Spice Girls a “style icon, a dynamic lady whose influence and recognition will add great excitement’’ to the ad campaign.
Joaquin Phoenix is quitting movies to focus on music.
“He has said that Two Lovers is his last. But this is not strange. Joaquin has been directing music videos and been involved in music for the last number of years,’’ Susan Patricola, Phoenix’s publicist, said Friday.
Phoenix first talked about his decision to Extra last week while attending a fundraiser in San Francisco, abruptly ending the interview after the reporter wondered whether he was joking.
Patrick Swayze, filming again less than a year after being given a grim diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, described chemotherapy as “hell on wheels” but said work had kept him feeling positive. Swayze, 56, best known for his dance instructor role in the movie Dirty Dancing, underwent months of chemotherapy and an experimental drug treatment to beat one of the most virulent forms of cancer, which experts say has only a 5 percent five-year survival rate.
British actress Sienna Miller’s life has been made intolerable because of a “campaign of harassment” by photographers, her lawyer told London’s High Court on Thursday. Miller, 26, star of movies such as Alfie and Layer Cake, is taking legal action against photographic agency Big Pictures Ltd and its founder, Darryn Lyons, claiming they are guilty of harassment.
Germany’s first television station for gay men will go on air this week offering entertainment and news with homosexual themes via satellite and cable, the new TIMM channel said Friday.
The line-up will include popular series such as Queer as Folk, The L-Word and Absolutely Fabulous dubbed into German as well as documentaries on gay stars or celebrities who are big in the gay community such as Rupert Everett, Susan Sarandon and Liza Minnelli, the station said in a statement.
With the slogan “We love men,” TIMM said it was aimed at the estimated 3.6 million gay men who live in Germany, and also hoped to draw their family and friends, lesbians and a few “metrosexuals.”
“TIMM enriches the existing television landscape with programming from and by the target group — simply for everyone who loves men,” it said.
“The highly positive feedback from the target group in the last 12 months has shown us how high the demand is for tailored information, entertainment and service.”
If you are a Western and especially a white foreign resident of Taiwan, you’ve undoubtedly had the experience of Taiwanese assuming you to be an English teacher. There are cultural and economic reasons for this, but one of the greatest determinants is the narrow range of work permit categories that exist for Taiwan’s foreign residents, which has in turn created an unofficial caste system for foreigners. Until recently, laowai (老外) — the Mandarin term for “foreigners,” which also implies citizenship in a rich, Western country and distinguishable from brown-skinned, southeast Asian migrant laborers, or wailao (外勞) — could only ever
Sept. 23 to Sept. 29 The construction of the Babao Irrigation Canal (八堡圳) was not going well. Large-scale irrigation structures were almost unheard of in Taiwan in 1709, but Shih Shih-pang (施世榜) was determined to divert water from the Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪) to the Changhua plain, where he owned land, to promote wet rice cultivation. According to legend, a mysterious old man only known as Mr. Lin (林先生) appeared and taught Shih how to use woven conical baskets filled with rocks called shigou (石笱) to control water diversion, as well as other techniques such as surveying terrain by observing shadows during
In recent weeks news outlets have been reporting on rising rents. Last year they hit a 27 year high. It seems only a matter of time before they become a serious political issue. Fortunately, there is a whole political party that is laser focused on this issue, the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP). They could have had a seat or two in the legislature, or at least, be large enough to attract media attention to the rent issue from time to time. Unfortunately, in the last election, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) acted as a vote sink for
This is a film about two “fools,” according to the official synopsis. But admirable ones. In his late thirties, A-jen quits his high-paying tech job and buys a plot of land in the countryside, hoping to use municipal trash to revitalize the soil that has been contaminated by decades of pesticide and chemical fertilizer use. Brother An-ho, in his 60s, on the other hand, began using organic methods to revive the dead soil on his land 30 years ago despite the ridicule of his peers, methodically picking each pest off his produce by hand without killing them out of respect