Clarkson Mocks the Idea That the BBC Is Tory

Jeremy Clarkson has poured scorn, as only he can, on the ridiculous idea that the BBC is a Tory stronghold. Here’s an excerpt from his piece in the Sunday Times.

Many angry, red-faced people have pointed out that the present Chairman of the BBC is a Tory party donor and that Tim Davie, the Director-General, once stood as a Conservative candidate in the local council elections in Hammersmith & Fulham. The message, then, is clear. At the very top, the Beeb is a festering maggot pit run by the bastard love children of Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Gekko.

That’s why Gary Lineker was temporarily stood down — not because he’d broken some weird impartiality clause in his contract but because he’d dared to challenge this Government’s tireless resolve to treat immigration as if it’s basically a big game of snakes and ladders, and bounce everyone who lands on a beach in Kent straight off to Rwanda. “You can’t work for the BBC with views like that, Big Ears, so bugger off.”

Then there was Fiona Bruce. When someone on Question Time suggested that Stanley Johnson was a wife-beater, she interrupted to say that his friends had said he’d only done it once. Now, we all know she did this because she was legally required to do so. But, according to the mob, the ghost of Keith Joseph was transmitting his thoughts into her earpiece from the BBC’s throne room.

The mob, however, is wrong. Yes, at this precise moment of history it’s possible that the two people at the top of the BBC might at some point in their past have voted Conservative, but what about everyone else? All the other 22,000 people involved in running this broadcasting giant? The army that creates and writes and presents all the shows it produces? Well, I worked at the BBC for more than 25 years, and I can tell you that almost everyone I met was redder than the end of a dog’s lipstick.

I was once told when visiting the Simon Mayo show that I would have to leave my copy of the Spectator outside as “extremist material” was not allowed in the Radio 5 Live offices. And then, while I was waiting to go on The One Show, a producer said that I had to agree with the public sector strikes that were happening that day or it would be “awkward”.

I know someone who was told to take down his Union Jack because it was “offensive”, and I was asked to remove my poster of Mrs Thatcher because it was upsetting people who walked past. I did, and replaced it with a picture of Kate and Wills, which somehow made them even angrier.

Worth reading in full.