Man with background in rightwing extremism accused of attacking woman with machete and threatening to kill her
A woman who was terrorised by an MI5 agent with a background in rightwing extremism is taking legal action against the security service.
Beth, not her real name, claimed the man, her former partner, attacked her with a machete and threatened to kill her.
Continue reading...Items including a handwritten letter from David Bowie and Peel’s horn gramophone will be up for sale next month
Records and music memorabilia once owned by the celebrated former BBC DJ John Peel, including a signed mono pressing of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1968 album Two Virgins, is to be sold at auction in June.
Peel’s family said in a statement: “John/Dad was in a position to have access to many of the most celebrated people and events in the history of popular music. This is reflected in a wealth of souvenirs he collected. In going through the accumulation of 40 years of pop music moments, we decided that some of the most interesting items might find a home, with fans of his programme or of the artists whose music he played.”
Continue reading...BBC Comedy development drive to fuel search for ‘relatable British characters’
The BBC will double the number of half-hour comedy pilots it makes and invest an extra £10m in the genre in a bid to find the next Fleabag or Motherland.
Sharing plans for the future of comedy at the corporation, the director of BBC Comedy, Jon Petrie, said his department was investing in its “development process”.
Continue reading...Presenter will return to broadcaster for first time since 2018 to oversee weekend of programming
The radio and TV presenter Kirsty Young will return to the BBC for the first time since 2018 to lead the broadcaster’s platinum jubilee coverage.
Young, who presented BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs for 12 years, stepped back from the programme in August 2018 because she had a form of fibromyalgia, a long-term condition that causes pain all over the body.
Continue reading...Downing Street refuses to deny PM told MPs archbishops were being unfairly critical as church figures defend Justin Welby
Downing Street has gone into open battle with the Church of England over its condemnation of the Rwanda deportation scheme, with No 10 officials doubling down on Boris Johnson’s claim that archbishops were being unfairly critical.
The prime minister reportedly told Conservative MPs on Tuesday evening that senior clergy had criticised plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda more than they had condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This was not denied by No 10.
Continue reading...Most broadcasts fail to attract more than 100,000 viewers, according to official ratings
When BBC Three relaunched as a live television channel earlier this year, the corporation hoped its counterintuitive punt on a youth-focused broadcast outlet would help it reach new audiences. Instead, the channel’s shows are consistently being beaten in the ratings by repeats of old history programmes featuring the deceased steeplejack Fred Dibnah on BBC Four.
Most of BBC Three’s programmes have so far failed to attract more than 100,000 viewers on live television, according to official viewing figures, while some shows are lucky to get a tenth of that. Even the programmes that do perform relatively well – such as episodes of MasterChef Australia – are rarely the original distinctive in-house shows that the channel exists to provide.
Continue reading...Video mocked up with BBC News logo has been aired on Russian state TV and spread across social media
The BBC has warned that a video carrying its branding in which it is claimed that a missile attack on a railway station that killed dozens was carried out by Ukraine is fake.
The video, mocked up with a BBC News logo and using similar graphics to the broadcaster, gives the false impression that it has confirmed that Ukrainian armed forces were behind the attack on Kramatorsk railway station on Friday.
Continue reading...Bosses said to have been unhappy with choice of candidates after all-female shortlist was produced
BBC bosses have readvertised the job of political editor after being unhappy with the choice of candidates to replace Laura Kuenssberg in one of the most influential roles in British journalism.
Following weeks of interviews and an extensive recruitment process, the corporation had produced an all-female shortlist for the role, with ITV News’s Anushka Asthana and Sky News’s Sophy Ridge believed to be the final two candidates. An announcement on which of them would get the job had been expected to coincide with Kuenssberg stepping down last week.
Continue reading...BBC’s director-general says new Russian legislation ‘appears to criminalise the process of independent journalism’
Global news media said they were temporarily suspending reporting in Russia to protect their journalists after a new law cracking down on foreign news outlets was passed that threatened jail terms of up to 15 years for spreading “fake news”.
Britain’s BBC said Friday it had temporarily halted reporting in Russia, and by the end of the day, the Canadian Broadcasting Company and Bloomberg News said their journalists were also stopping work. CNN and CBS News said they would stop broadcasting in Russia, and other outlets removed Russian-based journalists’ bylines as they assessed the situation.
Continue reading...Website reportedly available at only 17% of normal levels in Russia, hours after broadcaster revives radio technology to reach Ukraine and parts of Russia
Access to BBC websites has been restricted in Russia, hours after the corporation brought back its shortwave radio service in Ukraine and Russia to ensure civilians in both countries can access news during the invasion.
State communications watchdog Roskomnadzor restricted access to BBC Russia’s online presence, as well as Radio Liberty and the Meduza media outlet, the state-owned Russian RIA news agency reported on Friday.
Continue reading...It’s 65 years today since television sets had to stop broadcasting to allow parents to put children to bed. How did it ever seem like a good idea?
In 1953, when Norma Young was seven, her family became the first in their Glasgow tenement to get a TV set. It was a big deal – the Youngs had had to choose between a car or a TV. They opted for a 14in Ekco TV as deep as it was wide – and Norma was opened up to the world of The Woodentops and Andy Pandy, two shows that rapidly became her favourites. But at 6pm every evening the screen went blank, and Norma’s viewing was at an end.
This wasn’t her parents regulating her TV time – it was the state. Abolished 65 years ago on Wednesday, the break in programming between 6pm and 7pm every night was a government policy, known colloquially as the toddlers’ truce.
Continue reading...He was the fake medium from Florida whose scandalous cons almost got him shot. So why did M Lamar Keene then blow the whistle on psychic swindlers? A new podcast finds out
What does it take for someone to impersonate a dead teenager to the grieving mother of the deceased? For M Lamar Keene, a prominent Tampa-based medium in the 1960s and 70s, it was a cinch – all it required was a cocktail of cunning, charisma and sheer audacity. In front of the congregation of his spiritualist church, Keene would enter a trance state and appear to speak as the deceased 17-year-old, Jack, and ask Jack’s mother, Lona, to donate thousands of dollars to the church. One day, Lona asked Jack about the secret name he used for her, to prove it was really him, and Keene was stumped – until he attended a gathering at her house and feigned a headache. While pretending to rest in her bedroom, he searched her belongings and found the name scribbled in a family Bible: “Appleonia”. He pulled it off.
Keene confessed to being a conman in his 1976 book, The Psychic Mafia. Jack and Lona’s was just one of many audacious cases he revealed in the exposé, which shook the world of spiritualism so much that it led to an attempt on his life. Someone took a shot at him on his lawn but missed, leaving a bullet in the side of his house. In the book, Keene described how mediums shared client information so that they could conduct “hot readings” based on solid facts. He recounted how they would steal jewellery from clients for a few months, only to pretend a dead family member’s spirit had made it reappear (which usually resulted in generous tips). Ultimately, he confirmed that mediums formed a vast network to fraudulently monetise people’s grief. So why did Keene – the so-called Prince of the Spiritualists – choose to blow the whistle on everyone?
Continue reading...He was the shellshocked genius who channelled his anarchic brilliance into The Goon Show. Ian Hislop and Nick Newman explain why they’ve written a play about Spike Milligan – while comedians remember a legend
The tortured lives of comedians form a biographical genre all of their own; there’s always an audience for the tears of a clown. No wonder Nick Newman and Ian Hislop chose Spike Milligan as the subject of their new play. Milligan, who died 20 years ago next month, is the troubled comedy genius to end them all. Shellshocked in the second world war, repeatedly admitted to hospital for mental ill health, subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, and increasingly embittered as his career failed to deliver on early promise – the Spike Milligan sad-clown drama writes itself.
“But we didn’t want to do that,” says Newman. “We wanted to ask: how did he come to create these brilliant things?” Their play – a cheerful act of ancestor-worship by by Private Eye’s editor and its eminent cartoonist – is about the first three years (1951-54) of The Goon Show, as its chief writer Milligan battles the BBC to get his vision on air. “It’s: will he survive the fallout from the war?,” says Newman, “and will he crack radio?” And, “spoiler alert!,” chimes in Hislop. “Milligan wins! We just wanted to have a play where he wins.”
Continue reading...Acclaimed novelist reveals she became almost silent as a child due to stress
Novelist Deborah Levy first discovered writing as a kind of therapy when her voice disappeared as a child, she has revealed.
Appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, the popular British writer, acclaimed for her Booker Prize-shortlisted novels Swimming Home and Hot Milk, said her voice gradually got quieter during her schooldays in South Africa.
Continue reading...The journalist behind those ‘explainer’ videos on seeing his No 10 Christmas party video go viral, being a drum’n’bass DJ and wearing ‘an awful lot’ of blue
Ros Atkins, 47, grew up in Cornwall and the Caribbean before reading history at Cambridge. His BBC career began on Radio 5 Live shortly after 9/11. He now presents Outside Source on the BBC News Channel and recently went viral for his “explainer” videos, broadcast on BBC Breakfast and posted online. He lives in south London with his wife and two daughters.
How are you finding newfound fame?
Well, I’ve neither been mobbed nor chased down the street, but it’s always pleasant if people pay attention to what you do.
Mudassar Kadir said ‘zero progress’ made since he and his family arrived at Dubai refugee centre
An Afghan former BBC journalist who managed to flee the Taliban has been stranded in a refugee camp for months because of delays to a resettlement scheme promised by the UK government.
Mudassar Kadir* is the only one of 14 former BBC employees to have escaped Afghanistan since the Taliban took over in August. The other 13 remain in hiding in fear of their lives.
Continue reading...Shoddy investigation into serial killer also result of underfunding, says producer of BBC drama about murders
Three victims of the serial killer Stephen Port might still be alive today were it not for a shoddy police investigation that was the result of “ineptitude, poor systems and underfunding”, the producer of a new drama about the crimes has said.
Jeff Pope is senior producer of Four Lives, a dramatisation for BBC One of the murders of four young gay men: Anthony Walgate, 23; Gabriel Kovari, 22; Daniel Whitworth, 21; and Jack Taylor, 21.
Continue reading...I had plumbing problems and his radio show transported me from the faecal hellscape in my garden. It became the ideal soundtrack for my pandemic reality
It was spring, and human excrement was pumping into our garden. I watched through the window as a perplexed young plumber with a long metal pole excavated the dark, gurgling drain. As if lockdown hadn’t been bad enough, our kitchen was now heavy with the stench of a thousand flushes. No one knew how to stop it. There was only one thing to do: brew weapons-grade black coffee and switch on the radio. That’s how I discovered Huey Morgan’s Saturday morning breakfast show on BBC 6 Music. It made everything feel a little more right in the world.
What started as a way to distract from the tide of hot, liquid excrement on our patio quickly became the highlight of the week for my girlfriend and me. Huey – of Fun Lovin’ Criminals fame – thumbing you through his records: early 90s rap, early 80s disco, and early 70s soul to blow away the cobwebs, with choice modern selections marbling the retro soundscape.
Continue reading...Actor’s achievements helping others embrace deaf identity and pursue passions on own terms
Amid all the noise, glitter and razzle-dazzle, the most iconic moment of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing took place in complete silence. The music paused for several seconds while deaf actor Rose Ayling-Ellis and her dancing partner Giovanni Pernice continued to glide elegantly across the floor.
The dance was intended as a tribute to the deaf community, but it has resonated far more broadly: as well as receiving a perfect score, the couple’s performance has been labelled the “greatest ever” on the show, while an official BBC clip has been viewed 1.7m times on YouTube.
There has been a resounding (silent) cheer for Ayling-Ellis’ success from the deaf community, who see her as a rare on-screen role model capable of inspiring deaf young people, who often struggle with pressures to fit into mainstream schooling, to embrace their deaf identity and pursue their passions on their own terms.
Continue reading...Admirers of vilified aristocrat say they hope series will allow her to be ‘seen in a different light’
It took the judge more than three hours to read out his damning judgment at the end of one of the longest, most expensive and toxic divorce cases of the 20th century.
Margaret, the Duchess of Argyll, was, he declared with contempt, “a highly sexed woman” who was not “satisfied with normal relations and had started to indulge in disgusting sexual activities to gratify a debased sexual appetite”.
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