Face off

Reg­u­lar read­ers will prob­ably be aware that I’m quite a fan of the BBC’s World Affairs Editor, John Simpson. Tak­ing this into account, it’s per­haps sur­pris­ing for me to admit that I am now liv­ing in a frazzled state of almost per­man­ent fear of the man. And it’s all because of those bloody BBC Digital ads.

It’s got to the stage where I’m find­ing it vir­tu­ally impossible to sit oppos­ite someone and not ima­gine them rip­ping their face off to reveal Simpson’s endear­ing — but frankly some­what toad-like — fea­tures, shortly fol­lowed by his rather dry and mono­ton­ous read­ing of the phrase:

“You can already get eight BBC chan­nels on cable and satel­lite. But now you can also get them on Freeview, a pack­age of 30 channels …”

No. No more. Stop. Please. Stop it. Please John, I’m beg­ging you. Stop doing the ads. You’re the man who, for a time, I was per­fectly ready to accept had almost single-handedly lib­er­ated Kabul. OK, so you didn’t. But the point is that I (and most of the UK) believed that you could have done. After that bravura per­form­ance, we eagerly awaited the moment when you would stride pur­pose­fully into Bagh­dad, car­ry­ing noth­ing more deadly than a BBC badge and a copy of the Radio Times, and Sad­dam would instantly sur­render as the streets echoed to the sound of the Iraqi people chant­ing your name in celebration.

But it wasn’t to be. They had to use Shock & Awe instead. Damn.

Dur­ing the war in Iraq, you were forced to stand aside as vari­ous young upstarts — chil­dren not fit to lick the soles of your Hush Pup­pies, like Rageh Omaar and Ben Brown (I can barely bring myself to type their worth­less names) — posi­tioned them­selves in the thick of the action and rev­elled in the view­ers’ adu­la­tion. Mean­while, you lan­guished in the north of the coun­try. Maybe you were won­der­ing why, John. Why, after all you’d done for the BBC and after you’d proved so pop­u­lar with the view­ers, had you been ban­ished to the side­lines? Why were you left in the demean­ing situ­ation of only being allowed to chat to Huw Edwards on the Ten O’Clock News almost as an after-thought, if there were a couple of spare minutes in the programme?

I’ll tell you why, John. It was because of that damn ad cam­paign! How could we take you ser­i­ously as a reporter if we were sat in front of our tele­vi­sions think­ing that beneath your skin lurked Richard Black­wood, Dot Cot­ton or some third-rate children’s TV presenter? Your col­leagues in BBC News — not to men­tion us poor view­ers — were all ter­ri­fied that you were sud­denly going to start tug­ging at your face in the middle of a report, as your speech slowed and you slipped into some form of hyp­notic trance:

“Tonight in Iraq, the situ­ation is … You. Can. Also. Get. Them. On. Freeview. You. Will. Be. Assim­il­ated. There. Is. No. Escape.”

So, Mr Simpson — I’m not sure that I can still call you John after this com­pre­hens­ive char­ac­ter assas­sin­a­tion — for the sake of everyone’s san­ity, please retire from those advert­ise­ments grace­fully. Leave the pub­li­city stuff to George Ala­giah — after all, he needs the expos­ure. You don’t. You’re an elder states­man of TV news, and we respect you.

And if you do insist on con­tinu­ing your ill-advised advert­ising side­line, I fear the worst will hap­pen — you will prob­ably end up becom­ing as down­right freak­ish and scary as Steven Berkoff, when he ripped off his face to reveal that bloody huge dino­saur. A fuck­ing dino­saur, I tell you. I didn’t sleep for three nights after I first wit­nessed that par­tic­u­lar horror.

I don’t want John Simpson in my nightmares.