Hypocrisy at the Beeb!

What do these TV presenters have in common:

* Jeremy Clarkson

* Tim Wonnacott

Answer: both are inarguably popular personalities who were sacked / suspended from long-running TV series for falling foul of the Beeb's faceless mandarins. Clarkson apparently got his P45 for smacking a junior producer who undoubtedly fell short of expectations (but you can't hit people and get away with it, can you? Unless your name is Prescott, of course!)  It seems unlikely that Clarkson's ill-advised use of the word 'slope' had much to do with his departure, since his old buddy May came out with exactly the same 'gag' on his current BBC programme....

The amiable Wonnacott was given the elbow for reasons as yet unclear: leaks from the BBC suggest they might have been related to Clarkson-esque bullying (sic) or possibly a refusal to donate an appearance fee to charity. All most strange!

Even 'stranger' (and this is where the hyprocrisy comes in!) is the fact that both presenters continue to be seen in repeats on the BBC. Could it, perhaps, be that the organisation is still keen to milk the cash cow of these phenomenally successful programs, while appearing to distance themselves from the alleged non-PC antics of their stars?

More bizarrely: on the recent series of Winter Watch, Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan repeatedly made smutty innuendoes around the occasionally-used name for a male Black Grouse:

“I’ll get Michaela out of bed to show her black cock in the flesh,”

"The promise of black cock live first thing in the morning is a very real one"

In fact these two are even worse at the casual smut game than were dear old Bill Oddie and Kate Humble (Remember the 'Wing-trembler' and 'Horny Stag Beetle' episodes?) Oddie has since claimed that he was never told why he was sacked, but it is rumoured to have been related to 'an incident' involving Ms Humble on Brownsea Island. Personally, I always found Bill & Kate a far more engaging and entertaining partnership than Packham & Strachan: in any case, I see it as a typical piece of BBC double standards that the diminutive Mr Packham and the 'Hitman & Her' fugitive Ms Strachan get away with far worse pre-watershed smut that the other four....