NADINE DORRIES: Why I WON’T be watching the BBC’s Jimmy Savile drama
Family Sundays in my house follow a cosy routine: a spot of gardening, I cook a roast and then, later, we all gather, with a cheese board and snacks, to watch a murder mystery or a true crime documentary.
Favourites from the former genre include Knives Out and Glass Onion, and from the latter, White House Farm, the story of how Jeremy Bamber killed his parents, sister and her twin sons at their Essex farm one night in 1985.
We don’t want anything too graphic, of course, just a compelling narrative with a few twists.
There is, however, one true crime drama we won’t be tuning in to and that is The Reckoning, the four-part dramatisation of the life of Jimmy Savile which started on BBC One last night.
Savile was an evil paedophile whom the BBC continued to fete and protect even as his predilections were widely known in Broadcasting House and beyond.
The Reckoning, the four-part dramatisation of the life of Jimmy Savile which started on BBC One last night. He will be played by Steve Coogan (pictured) and his wife Angie will be played by Gemma Jones (pictured)
NADINE DORRIES: Savile was an evil paedophile whom the BBC continued to fete and protect even as his predilections were widely known in Broadcasting House and beyond
NADINE DORRIES: Staff (at the BBC) would try to ensure he was never left alone with young girls and would bang on his dressing room door if ever he locked it because of their fears about what he might have been up to
NADINE DORRIES: One true crime drama we won’t be tuning in to and that is The Reckoning, the four-part dramatisation of the life of Jimmy Savile which started on BBC One last night
Staff would try to ensure he was never left alone with young girls and would bang on his dressing room door if ever he locked it because of their fears about what he might have been up to.
His sinister conduct was the worst-kept secret, but he was never called to account.
He was TV gold, an asset, to be shielded at all costs.
As my colleague Christopher Stevens made clear in his unsparing review last week, this drama seeks to spread the blame — on the NHS, various politicians, sections of the media and even the Catholic church — all of which distracts from the failures of senior BBC management. No, the Beeb doesn’t absolve itself totally, but I understand there are some significant omissions in the story.
How is it that the Newsnight investigation into Savile after his death which was hurriedly shelved — a scandal that dominated headlines for weeks — isn’t addressed?
The BBC simply dismisses it as a story to be told another day. And while Margaret Thatcher features predominantly in one episode as a long-standing friend of Savile, no mention is made of Keir Starmer, now Labour leader but back then Director of Public Prosecutions when the Crown Prosecution Service investigated the DJ but did not prosecute because of ‘insufficient evidence’.
Starmer was not the reviewing lawyer and he later commissioned an investigation which criticised both police and prosecutors over their failures.
But why wasn’t this important event included?
In another scene, the blame is subtly laid on a priest who fails to elicit a confession from a frail Savile. Another box ticked because doesn’t everyone love to hate the Catholic Church as well as Thatcher?
My question: how much longer can the BBC get away with behaving like this?
From Savile, Rolf Harris and Stuart Hall to Russell Brand and Martin Bashir, there have been too many failures and too many cover-ups — and yet it is shamelessly using this dark period in its history to chase ratings.
Our national broadcaster is unaccountable, secretive and deeply flawed. No wonder the number of licence fee-payers is falling off a cliff.
Rishi must not kowtow to tech giants
When I was Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, I was proud to oversee the introduction of the Digital Markets Bill and the establishment of the potential Digital Markets Unit (DMU).
I won’t bore you with the detail, but one of the biggest threats to independent journalism — and therefore to free speech — is the fact that tech giants such as Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp etc), Google, Apple and Microsoft, lift the work of journalists employed by media outlets and post it on their platforms.
They do not pay for the privilege, although they profit hugely from digital advertising the work attracts.
What is more, the tech giants can manipulate the online visibility of articles — and therefore news — using algorithms. It’s no coincidence that Left-leaning media outlets tend to top search lists, despite the fact that they are not necessarily the best-selling publications or most popular sites.
The role of the DMU was to regulate powerful tech firms and ensure fairer practices and greater transparency.
Rishi Sunak pictured yesterday at Chequers
Former prime minister Boris Johnson, a journalist himself, understood this. He gave his backing to make the Bill work in a way that protected independent journalism and free speech.
However, Rishi Sunak, a known admirer of Silicon Valley and all things Californian, is under pressure to water down the powers of the Digital Markets Bill and the DMU. (Personally, I can’t believe our ex-deputy PM, Nick Clegg, now earning an eye-watering salary as President of Global Affairs for Meta, hasn’t been lobbying hard on this behind the scenes in No 10.)
This is a Bill which has been signed off by Cabinet and is already passing through Parliament. Yet at this late stage, Sunak is considering allowing tech giants to launch substantive appeals against regulatory measures, potentially miring the DMU in long administrative and legal challenges.
Google and Facebook took around 80 per cent of the annual digital advertising spend in the UK in 2019. Be in no doubt, if tech giants aren’t regulated, many media outlets may not survive, not even the Left-leaning ones.
Then we will be dependent on woke millennials in California deciding what news, if any, we see.
If you needed confirmation Labour politics was, and always will be, the politics of envy, look no further than Shadow Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson. She’s spearheading policies that would impose 20 per cent VAT on private school fees — but has admitted she’s never visited one in her official capacity, nor has she seen in person the great work many do with other schools in underprivileged areas.
It is poorer pupils who benefit most from such relationships with the independent sector, and it is poorer pupils who will be the biggest losers of this misguided policy.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson at a school in London last month
I wrote about the French bed bug invasion some weeks ago and now learn that, following Paris Fashion Week, the critters have reportedly been hitching first-class international travel in the Louis Vuitton suitcases of the world’s most stylish folk to all corners of the globe. Meanwhile, an acquaintance in the capital has had all her soft furnishings, mattresses, rugs, curtains, sofas and cushions placed in large plastic bags, double-sealed with duct tape. Normal fumigation with pesticides isn’t working, so she’s hoping the pests will die of starvation. And to be on the safe side, she’s moved into her mother’s home until Christmas.
Meanwhile, infected mattresses are being left on Marseille’s streets.
Please God let us Brits escape this buggy nightmare!
A bed bug on a glove of a biocide technician from the company Hygiene Premium who treats an apartment against bed bugs in L’Hay-les-Roses, near Paris, France
Like every other sane person in Britain, I’m utterly baffled that councils, police forces, the fire service, universities and other public bodies are being advised to recognise the male menopause.
Seriously, give me a break! Will this mythical malaise — no doubt to be used by malingerers to get paid time off work — present just like man flu? Will it be worse than anything a woman has experienced, last five times longer and will there suddenly be a ‘cure’ available to save our poor chaps?
There’s a precedent, after all. Remember when impotence became a thing and, hey presto, suddenly men could buy Viagra over the counter?
As if HRT could ever be that easy for sufferers of the real menopause to get their hands on!
Tess is Strictly professional … not patronising
I fear this may become a regular occurrence — having to defend a Strictly participant from online bullying. Last week it was Shirley Ballas (‘sexist’, apparently), this week it’s Tess Daly. Her crime? She’s accused of being ‘patronising’ to Nikita Kanda, the latest celebrity to be voted off on Sunday night. The BBC Asian Network presenter (pictured right, with her dance partner Gorka Marquez) was disappointed to have lost the dance-off. A longer stint on the show would boost her profile and future job prospects, we all get that. But for the trolls to go for Tess is simply not fair. She’s a complete professional and all I noticed was kindness and compassion.
Pictured: Tess Daly as the results were read to Nikita Kanda and Gorka Marquez
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