Sachsgate: The Aftermath

As I continued my battle with insomnia for the umpteenth night in a row, I found myself pondering the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross debacle of last year. I had been a regular listener of Brand's since the 6 Music days and I enjoyed his irreverant humour, so you can imagine my annoyance when he lost his job over Sachsgate (which I had christened it before the papers even got a whiff of the story ((which was 2 or 3 weeks after the actual event of course))).

Now it seems to me that Brand was unfortunate to lose his job, albeit jumping before he was pushed. Alright, so he did have sex with Andrew Sachs' granddaughter (who also happens to be an erotic dancer), however what two consenting adults get up to in their own time is no business of the millions of listeners who tuned in to Radio 2 that fateful evening, though it would appear that someone neglected to tell Jonathan Ross that. As he made the immortal line of Sachs' answerphone 'he f***ed your granddaughter). Wonderful(!) Charming(!) He's worth every penny of the license fee is that Ross(!) /sarcasm

It was patently Ross' fault. Brand had no intention of leaving a message based on the sexual exploits or otherwise of his granddaughter on Sachs' answerphone and was clearly appalled by Ross' allegation. After only a handful of complaints after the broadcast, it snowballed as the tabloids targeted Brand with a hate-campaign and weeks later Brand and Radio 2 controller Leslie Douglas found themselves in the Dole queue (well, not literally, but you catch my drift).

There are two key facts that most commentators overlooked, however. Number 1, Brand's sung apology (left as another answerphone message) was entirely improvised on the spot and remains one of the most impressive examples of ad-hoc song crafting I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing. Listening to Brand skilfully rhyme 'consentual' with 'menstrual' and 'contrition to the max' with 'Andrew Sachs' was a veritable joy. Number 2 is the person we should all feel sorry for in this. No, not Andrew Sachs, but rather Brand's writer and usual co-host Matt Morgan, who returned from his holiday only to find that he was out of a job because of Jonathan Ross, a misfortune that few of us are ever likely to suffer. Under Morgan's steadying influence Brand provided a podcast soundtrack to my teenage years. Morgan was the only man capable of keeping the hirsuite comedian in check and doing it with a deal of panache and aplomb. Conversing on subjects from Brand's previous drug addiction to taking lessons in Krav Maga, the Israeli army martial art.

Brand's resignation showed a good deal of dignity, but I regret that Morgan was not in a position to do the same. Hell, they should have just given the slot to him and maybe even have brought in previous Brand contributor Trevor Lock.

Anyway that's my two penneth on the subject and only a mere 9 months too late.