Trot Off!

So, let me see if I’ve got this straight. At the end of January the BBC refused to air the charity appeal for aid to Gaza because, in the words of Mark Thompson, the Corporation’s Director General, “We are passionate about defending the BBC’s impartiality.” Yet it was somehow all right for the airwaves to be turned over to U2 last week so they could whore for their new album. How does that work exactly?

Usually a band hawking new material has to make do with a spot on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and the odd guest appearance on Radio 1 or Radio 2. Yet last week saw the bunch of annoying, self-righteous bog-trotters appear on Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 show (Monday); Radio 4’s Front Row (Tuesday); Jo “Terrahawk” Whiley’s Radio 1 show (Friday) and Chris Evans’ Radio 2 show (Friday). Meanwhile on the terrestrial TV channels, Tuesday’s edition of The Culture Show was given over to Lauren Laverne fawning over Saint Bonio and his lackeys before they rounded off the week, unsurprisingly, playing out the weekly edition of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.

While they didn’t end up presenting Breakfast or appear on either Bargain Hunt or Eggheads, there was something about pressing the red button to see them perform live on the roof at Broadcasting House. Unfortunately there was no opportunity to press the red button again and do us all a favour by calling in an air strike on Portland Place in the way the irritating U2=BBC trailers had relentlessly carpet-bombed the schedules throughout February.

How did these poverty-fighting tax evaders, insightfully lauded by Worzel Geldof as not being “wankers” at the beginning of The Culture Show, get such unfettered access? Blackmailing Thompson with photographs of him fisting a swan seemed the logical conclusion until I skimmed through The Observer’s website and discovered an article by Miranda Sawyer that stated:

U2=BBC? Has Bono become Chairman of the Beeb? No, but Lesley Douglas has become Director of Programming and Business Development at Universal Records. That's Lesley Douglas, ex-Controller of Radio 2 and 6Music, who resigned following the Brand-Ross fiasco; and that's Universal Records, which owns Island Records, U2's record label.

Well, that obviously makes it all right then.