Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Stick to the undies, Paxman

Time to feel sorry for the Oxbridge educated males? Paxo thinks so...

Self-appointed BBC's chief interrogator Jeremy Paxman strikes again. Back in January he thought he'd act as the country's spokesperson for those men whose bollocks are routinely failed by their M&S underpants. Now he's spouting bile over the balance of power in television.

If you're white, male and middle-class, according to Paxman, you have no chance of making it in the world of media and TV. And of course, we've all seen those scenes, haven't we? Those BBC recruitment stools soldiering on in roughest Hackney. Sir Trevor McDonald, Gutto Hari and Moira Stewart spending days scouting for talent in deepest Brixton and Brick Lane, London; Sparkhill, Birmingham and Rusholme, Manchester, striving, of course, to snap up black, female, working class media aspirants - eager to oust poor Oxbridge educated white middle-class BBC and ITV staff.


More likely, £800,000 a year is turning Cambridge-educated Paxman into a bit of a Jim Morrison-on-acid-like visionary.

The best riposte to grumpy old Paxo came, surprisingly, from the Telegraph. In the words of Glenda Cooper, those looking for answers may want to look at the "Sutton Trust’s report, which found that 86 per cent of leading newspaper and TV journalists were educated at those well known working-class havens, independent and grammar schools".

No comments: