What a Buerk...

Well, 2012 was shite but 2013 seems to be getting off to a good start...

I admire a man who speaks his mind and to hell with the consequences. Such a man is former BBC newsreader, Michael Buerk, who now he's retired clearly feels unfettered by his former BBC masters and clearly is somewhat unimpressed.

Here's what he had to say about the Diamond Jubilee coverage :

The one enduring British institution [the Monarchy] was mocked by another that had shamefully lost its way. On the screen, a succession of Daytime airheads preened themselves, or gossiped with even more vacuous D-list “celebrities”. With barely an exception, they were cringingly inept. Nobody knew anything, nobody cared. The main presenter couldn’t even work out what to call the Queen. I was so ashamed of the BBC I would have wept if I hadn’t been so angry.

Frankly, that sounded pretty accurate to me. I remember being so unimpressed that I switched over and watched it on Sky - a channel that I steadfastly try to avoid.

And here's his views on Tess Daly, who frankly I found embarrassing to watch. Seems Michael agrees...

The Dunkirk Little Ships, the most evocative reminders of this country’s bravest hour, were ignored so that a pneumatic bird-brain from Strictly Come Dancing could talk to transvestites in Battersea Park. The worst thing was that it was deliberate – planned that way to be ‘light’ and ‘inclusive’

And it doesn't stop there. He also attacks George Entwistle, the BBC executive responsible for the Jubilee coverage who was subsequently promoted to director-general - and then sacked with a massive pay off...

The BBC actually congratulated itself, and the executive ultimately responsible was promptly promoted to become the most disastrous director-general in the Corporation’s history. The BBC is a private school old boys’ and girls’ association .  .  . now, while most of us are being squeezed, senior executive pay soars and, even at the top of public service organisations like the BBC, fortunes are flung at failures.

Buerk has been here before, but last time got it disastrously wrong by scoring a bit of an own goal, when he said about newsreaders "You get a great deal of money, you have very little work to do and you don’t need a brain. There are some real lame-brains doing it. It is the only job that actually requires no talent at all. If you can read out loud, you can do it."

On that occasion he clearly forgot that that is exactly what he used to do and got £175,000 a year for doing it. Sorry, Mike, but slight whiff of hypocrisy there - especially as these little outbursts do nothing to damage your £9,600 fee for after dinner speaking?

Otherwise, I totally agree with you!