Ross and Brand: Why they did it

A phone interview was planned, but “due to unforeseen circumstances” (BBC website news), Andrew Sachs couldn’t be there. So they phoned him anyway, and talked to the answerphone.

Sachs was insulted because he wasn’t there to answer the phone call. He spoiled the programme. It was his business to be there.

It was pure media arrogance.

Notice how excited Brand was about the technology. “I’m so sorry about the last message”, he says. “Put the phone down”.

He speaks to the technology: “All right, Andrew Sachs’s answerphone?” Then: “I’m ever so sorry for what I said about Andrew Sachs”.

Sachs himself has been replaced by the technology.

Ross talks about the photographs of grandchildren he imagines would be next to the phone, as Sachs supposedly listens. Because it was Sachs’s business to be there, to hear Jonathan Ross speak.

Ross speaks, you listen.

Notice how excited Ross is about Brand having sex. It’s the first thing he says. And the second: “She was bent over the couch…”. (Been watching Straw Dogs, have we?)

And then the idea of death.

Brand says to the technologised Sachs: “I’ll kill you”. And then talks about his victim hanging himself because of his revelation about Georgina Baillie.

Brand speaks, others die.

Mlle Apache, bienvenue!

We welcome Jane O’Grady as Mademoiselle Apache, evidently an enthusiast for headbutting violence. Writing in The Observer in May 2008, she describes some of the things she likes to do:

Feeling yourself observed, concentrating on your headache, using your head as a weapon with which to butt someone, transforms it into a thing or a tool separate from you, the agent and observer.

This detachment has indeed been M. Apache’s experience in these circumstances, head down on the Boulevard Raspail. We hope Mlle Apache will become a true headbutter, in every sense of the word. Our only fear is that she may turn out to be too intelligent for the pages of The Observer.