Monday, February 06, 2012

Snobbery For The Masses

Filming is set to start later this month on the seventh series of Doctor Who, with Matt Smith reprising his role as The Doctor. Steven Moffat has also teased one or two more details about the series. In Australia, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is currently performing The Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular and The Very Moffster his very self has written a few words in the programme for the performance. Specifically, he had this to say about what we can expect from series seven: 'Doctor Who's fiftieth anniversary is coming. In Cardiff, we're gearing up for the biggest, the best and the most ambitious season we've ever made. There will be shocks, surprises and heartbreak - The Doctor is about to say goodbye to his very best friends, Amy and Rory. And then he's about to say hello to someone very different - The Doctor is going to meet someone very new in the very last place he could ever have expected.' So, he didn't really tell us anything we didn't already know, then!

Gillian Anderson has landed a lead role in BBC2's new drama The Fall. The psychological thriller, penned by The Runaway author Allan Cubitt, focuses on a serial killer in Belfast and the female detective superintendent in charge of the investigation. The five-part series is expected to follow the case and will focus on both the killer's and the victims' families. Anderson has signed up to play DSI Gibson, the detective who comes to help the Belfast police struggling with a big murder investigation. The actress has recently appeared in a number of British dramas, including Great Expectations, The Crimson Petal and the White and Any Human Heart. The BBC's controller of drama commissioning Ben Stephenson said: 'The Fall is a unique, forensic and characterful take on a classic genre that continues BBC2's commitment to original British drama in 2012. Cubitt's rich and complex psychological thriller combined with another compelling performance from Gillian Anderson will keep viewers on the edge of their seats.' Further casting is expected to be announced shortly and filming is due to begin in Belfast next month. Other series due to begin on BBC2 later this year include ensemble historical drama White Heat, police drama Line of Duty and an all-star adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End.

The third series premiere of Being Human attracted more than 1.1 million viewers across BBC3 and BBC HD on Sunday night, according to overnight data. The supernatural drama averaged 1.12m in its 9pm timeslot combined - eight hundred and ninety thousand on BBC3 and two hundred and twenty seven thousand on BBC HD. This figure was slightly down on last year's series two opener, which was seen by just under 1.5m although it was hugely up on BBC3's slot average. The terrestrial channels saw Call the Midwife heavily be-atch slap its competition in the competitive 8pm slot with another hugely impressive audience of 9.02m for BBC1. The impressive documentary Bomber Boys followed with 4.59m. Risible odious Twatting About On Ice appealed to 7.24m sad glakes, with 6.19m of them tuning-in for the results show and hour later. Wild at Heart was broadcast in-between, taking 6.35m from 8.30pm. Top Gear had just over five million viewer from 8pm on BBC2 (including eight hundred thousand on BBC HD) almost exactly the same as its audience the previous week, while Toughest Place To Be A Fisherman was watched by 2.33m. The two other terrestrial channels broadcast movies from 9pm - The Time Traveller's Wife on Channel Four (1.78m with two hundred and thirty thousand on C4+1) beating 300 on Channel Five (nine hundred and fifty seven thousand punters). Overall, BBC1 secured another primetime victory with 23.7 per cent ahead of ITV's 22.2 per cent. BBC2, largely thanks to Top Gear, took third with 10.1 per cent.

Top Twenty programmes week-ending 29 January
1 Coronation Street - ITV Mon - 12.20m
2 Call The Midwife - BBC1 Sun - 10.66m
3 EastEnders - BBC1 Mon - 9.74m
4 Twatting About On Ice - ITV Sun - 8.14m
5 Emmerdale - ITV Mon - 7.98m*
6 Mrs Brown's Boys - BBC1 Mon - 7.15m
7 Above Suspicion - ITV Mon - 7.05m
8 Countryfile - BBC1 Sat - 6.96m
9 Wild At Heart - ITV Sun - 6.67m*
10 Casualty - BBC1 Sat - 6.24m
11 National Television Awards 2012 - ITV Wed - 6.22m*
12 Top Gear - BBC2 Sun - 6.21m
13 Birdsong - BBC1 Sun - 6.16m
14 Hustle - BBC1 Fri - 5.84m
15 BBC News - BBC1 Sun - 5.81m
16 National Lottery: Who Dares Wins - BBC1 Sat - 5.26m
17 MasterChef - BBC1 Tues - 5.15m
18 Holby City - BBC1 Tues - 5.07m
19 Six O'Clock News - BBC1 Sun - 5.03m
20 Antiques Roadshow (rpt) - BBC1 Sun - 4.93m
* = not including ITV HD figures.

Garrow's Law has been cancelled by BBC1. The period legal drama, which starred Andrew Buchan and was shown on Sunday nights, had picked up consistently decent - although seldom spectacular ratings. However, it will not be returning for a fourth series, the Radio Times reports. 'BBC1 will screen more than twenty new dramas this year, but Garrow's Law will not be returning,' a BBC spokesperson confirmed. Garrow's Law was written by Tony Marchant, who recently scripted BBC1's three-part drama Public Enemies and is now working on ITV1's new show Leaving.
The Scotland Yard team investigating allegations that newspaper journalists bribed police officers to obtain information is to be expanded by fifty per cent after four past and present Sun journalists were pinched by the bobbies just over a week ago. Sue Akers, a Metropolitan police detective assistant commissioner, told the Leveson inquiry on Monday that the Operation Elveden team will increase in size from forty police officers to sixty one to deal with the extended scope of the investigation into alleged corruption. The investigation is going in parallel with the Met's phone-hacking investigation, Operation Weeting. Akers said that the Elveden inquiry into alleged illegal payments by newspapers was important because 'if the public think that information is being leaked by police officers to journalists then it is inevitable that public confidence is eroded.' She added that there was 'very legitimate public interest in investigating this.' Updating Lord Justice Leveson on the status of the various Metropolitan police investigations into alleged newspaper malpractice, Akers said that between June and December the Elveden team was only focused on former Scum of the World journalists. She said that the journalists whom Elveden was focused on were 'reasonably senior.' However, that had changed after News Corporation's in-house management and standards committee handed over e-mail information relating to journalists on the Sun, which the police then further analysed. This line of enquiry led to the arrest to four past and present Sun journalists on 28 January. The four were not named at the inquiry but are understood to be Mike Sullivan, the crime editor of the Sun, Chris Pharo, the head of news, Fergus Shanahan, the former deputy editor and Graham Dudman, the former managing editor. Akers said that the police also wanted to question a fifth, unnamed, journalist who is currently abroad. Operation Elveden has seen fourteen people arrested, including three police officers and a single arrest conducted by the IPCC, the police complaints authority. Akers said that it had proved harder to identify police officers as suspects because journalists did not reveal the names of their contacts in internal e-mails the Elveden team has examined. Akers, who is overseeing all the Met's investigations into alleged illegal activity by newspapers, said that her teams were progressing on the basis of 'voluntary disclosure' by News Corp management and standards committee. The police are not entitled to seek a warrant under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, compelling News Corp to supply certain specified evidence, because the company is 'assisting the police with their investigations.' Akers also updated Lord Justice Leveson as to the progress of the Weeting phone-hacking inquiry, agreeing with the characterisation put to her by Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, that she was 'closer to the finishing line than the starting gun.' She said that there were eight hundred and twenty nine likely phone-hacking victims as identified primarily from notes seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the Scum of the World between 2001 and 2006. Of those five hundred and eighty one individuals could be identified by name. A further seventeen had not been contacted for 'operational reasons.' Akers also said there were a total of six thousand three hundred and forty nine further potential victims of criminal activity in various evidence collated by the Weeting team, although only a small proportion of these could be identified as likely phone-hacking victims. The police had also dealt with two thousand nine hundred individuals who were either hacked or who had written to the Met thinking that they might have been a victim of phone-hacking. A total of ninety police officers are working on Operation Weeting, with thirty five focused on dealing with victims. A third inquiry, Operation Tuleta, is examining allegations of computer hacking conducted by newspapers, and has twenty officers engaged on looking at fifty seven separate allegations of 'data intrusion' going back to the late 1980s.

The Daily Scum Mail's editor was 'aware' the paper was using private detectives but not of 'the extent' to which it was doing so, the Leveson Inquiry has heard claimed. The odious Paul Dacre, the last Fleet Street editor to go before the inquiry, said this practice of accessing information used to be 'commonplace' in the industry. 'Everybody, every newspaper' had been using private detective Steve Whittamore at one stage, he said. Which makes one wonder why the scum Mail recently made such an issue about the revelation that be the BBC had used Whittamore once. Oh yes, of course, because they're hypocritical lice scumbags who talk nothing but odious right-wing shite. Sorry, I'd forgotten for a second. Dacre, who also holds the post of editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, the paper's publishers, admitted he was aware that the Daily Scum Mail had been using Whittamore before 2006. 'We didn't realise what they were doing was illegal,' he claimed. 'There was a very hazy understanding of how the Data Protection Act worked and this was seen as a quick way of obtaining phone numbers and addresses to corroborate stories,' he added. Earlier in the inquiry, Scum Mail on Sunday editor Peter Wright said that his paper continued to use Whittamore for eighteen months after a police investigation into the unlawful trading of personal information. Dacre, however, said that he had sought 'written assurances' from Whittamore that he was 'acting within the law' and, in 2007, Dacre claims that he banned the use of all 'Whittamore inquiry agencies.' He also told the inquiry that newspapers should have the latitude to look into the lives of 'erring' celebrities, such as celebrity chefs, sportsmen and others who made money revealing their lives to the public. Dacre claimed that he had never placed a story in the newspaper which he knew had come from phone-hacking and was 'convinced' it did not happen. 'I know of no cases of phone-hacking,' he said. 'Having conducted a major internal inquiry, I am as convinced as I can be that there is no phone hacking on the Daily Mail. I don't make that statement lightly. And no editor, the editor of the Guardian or the Independent, could say otherwise.' He also refused to take back his description of the actor Hugh Grant's allegations about phone-hacking at the Scum Mail as 'mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media', unless Grant withdrew his statement. Defending a Scum Mail story reporting on the birth of Grant's baby, he said that a newspaper was 'entitled' to ask a celebrity such as Grant if he had had a child, especially when he had spoken previously of his desire to be a father. 'Grant has spent his life invading his own privacy,' he claimed. 'It seems a little bit ripe that when he does have a child, he and his press representatives won't confirm or deny that.' Last October, ahead of the start of the inquiry, Dacre delivered a seminar in which he argued self-regulation was the 'only viable way' of policing a free press. During an afternoon of questioning at the inquiry, he was asked to outline his views on how the current system could be improved. He suggested the industry could benefit from another body - on top of the Press Complaints Commission - to deal with standards, such as an ombudsman. Another idea was for a new press card system - existing cards 'don't mean much,' he said. Only journalists on papers signed up to the PCC could be entitled to them, and any without them could be refused access to government briefings or royal events. The ombudsman, he suggested, could have the power to cancel the card of a journalist guilty of gross malfeasance, just as doctors are struck off. Dacre also suggested picture agencies should join the new body and sign up to the code of practice. Dacre said that it was a 'pity' the Scum of the World had closed. 'I wouldn't have had the News of the World in my house but it did break great, great stories (with) a lot of serious political coverage in it,' he said. Questioned about Jan Moir's odious article on the death of gay BoyZone singer Stephen Gately, Dacre claimed: 'There isn't a homophobic bone in Jan Moir's body. I would die in a ditch to defend any of my columnists' right to write what they wish.' Standards had slipped in the coverage of Chris Jefferies, the landlord of Jo Yeates who was arrested but never charged on suspicion of her murder, Dacre said. 'I apologise to Mr Jefferies,' he said, claiming that the Daily Scum Mail was 'one of the least worst offenders.' Dacre dismissed a suggestion that the Scum Mail's campaign over murdered Stephen Lawrence came about after the London teenager's father did some plastering work for him. 'I really do find that insulting,' he said.

Two suspicious payments by Scum of the World journalists during the Milly Dowler case are under police investigation, the police anti-corruption watchdog has revealed. The Independent Police Complaints Commission said they were supervising the ongoing investigation, which resulted from paperwork handed over by the newspaper, but that 'no evidence' had yet surfaced to link the payments specifically to corrupt police officers. The IPCC disclosure came in the course of a report published on Monday, which dismissed unsubstantiated claims that a detective constable from Surrey police had sold information to journalists in 2002, including the missing teenager's mobile phone number. The report said the information, which came from a former Surrey police officer calling himself 'Andy', was unsubstantiated 'supposition and rumour.' But, t he report added: 'Officers from Operation Elveden, the investigation by the Metropolitan Police Service into allegations of corrupt payments by journalists to police officers, informed Surrey police they had documentation from the News of the World indicating that two payments had been made by journalists in 2002 in connection with Milly Dowler.' To whom, the report did not say. The report, by IPCC commissioner Mike Franklin, said: 'Enquiries with Operation Elveden revealed no evidence the two payments made by the News of the World in connection to Milly Dowler were to a police officer. This investigation, which is being supervised by the IPCC, is ongoing.' On the allegations that a Surrey police officer, identified as 'Officer A', had been 'feeding journalists information for cash', the report found: 'It is extremely likely the source of all the information that instigated this investigation is from the same person; "Andy." He did not provide the IPCC with any substantive or factual evidence to support the allegations and at best the information he provided can be described as supposition and rumour.' It has been previously established that the disgraced and disgraceful Scum of the World employed the private detective Glenn Mulcaire to hack into the missing Milly Dowler's voicemail messages in 2002, in an operation involving two senior Scum of the World executives, who have subsequently been arrested for questioning and bailed by police.

Sons of Anarchy has been picked up for a sixth season. The FX biker drama, created by Kurt Sutter, was recommissioned for a fifth run in October 2011. A sixth season has now been requested before the fifth has premiered, as part of Sutter's new deal with Twentieth Century FOX TV and FX Productions, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In addition, a seventh year of the show - which stars Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal and Ron Perlman - is also under consideration. 'There's a part of me that does see being able to tell this story in seven seasons,' said Sutter. '[But] I almost feel like when you hang that kind of finality and put a period on something, there's almost a backlash that happens with the fan base.' The showrunner added that Sons could even continue into an eighth season and beyond. 'If there's more story to be told after seven seasons and if financially it's still a feasible endeavour, I'm definitely open to doing more,' he admitted. Sutter's deal with FX will also allow him to develop new shows for the cable network, in addition to new episodes of Sons of Anarchy.

It's all change for Ian Jones, the Welsh-born new chief executive at S4C, who has traded in New York and his high-flying job at the History Channel for Cardiff. But at least he knew what he was letting himself in for. Not so his partner, Australian TV executive Andrea Ulbrick, who has never been to rain-swept Wales. 'The sun's come out, oh no, it's car headlights,' she quipped in one of her tweets. And, a wary welcome in the hillsides is unlikely to be improved by her first reaction to S4C fare such as the popular soap opera Pobol y Cwm (viewed with the help of English subtitles); it's clearly well-intentioned, but saying one is 'pleasantly surprised at the quality' can't help but sound more than a little bit patronising.

Award-winning underwater cameraman Mike deGruy, who worked with Titanic director James Cameron, has died in a helicopter crash in Australia. His employer, National Geographic, confirmed the sixty-year-old had died alongside Australian TV writer and producer Andrew Wight on Saturday. Their helicopter crashed soon after take-off from an airstrip near Nowra in New South Wales, police said. 'Mike and Andrew were like family to me,' Cameron said. 'They were my deep-sea brothers and both were true explorers who did extraordinary things and went places no human being has been,' he added in a joint statement with National Geographic. DeGruy was the director for undersea photography for Cameron's 2005 documentary, Last Mysteries of the Titanic. Based in California, he had qualified as a marine biologist before turning his hand to film-making, and went on to win multiple EMMY and BAFTA awards for cinematography. Wight, fifty two, was the writer and producer of the 3D film Sanctum, which was Australia's biggest box office hit of 2010. David Bennett, president of Australia's south coast recreational flying club, said the pair had set off to film a documentary when the helicopter crashed.

This blogger wishes to highlight a great piece of bile-filled invective from yer actual Charlie Brooker on the Daily Scum Mail's coverage of a study by Canadian academics which suggests that people with right-wing viewers are, generally, less intelligent. I particularly enjoyed King's Charlie writing the following: '"Sounds like a BBC study, type of thing they would waste the Licence fee on, load of Cods wallop," claimed Terry from Leicester, thereby managing to ignore the findings while simultaneously attacking public service broadcasting for something it hadn't done. For his next trick, Terry will learn to whistle and shit at the same time. Not all the respondents were stupid. Some were merely deluded. Someone calling themselves "Hillside" from Sydney claimed: "I have an IQ over two hundred, have six degrees and diplomas and am 'right-wing', as are others I know at this higher level of intelligence." His IQ score is particularly impressive considering the maximum possible score on Mensa's preferred IQ test is one hundred and sixty one. Whatever the numbers: intellectual dick-measuring isn't to everyone's tastes anyway. Simply by highlighting his own intelligence "Hillside" alienated several of his comment box brethren. "If there is one person I can not stand and that is a snob who thinks they are intelligent because if they were intelligent and educated they wouldn't be snobs," argued Liz from London. Once you've clambered over the broken grammar, deliberately placed at the start of the sentence like a rudimentary barricade of piled-up chairs, there's a tragic conundrum at work here. She claims intellectual snootiness is ugly, which it is, but unfortunately she says it in such a stupid way it's impossible for anyone smarter than a steak-and-ale pie not to look down on her. Thus, for Liz, the crushing cycle of snobbery continues.' King Charlie, once again you spoil us with your savage wit at numskullery.

Being Human's Lenora Crichlow has admitted that filming Russell Tovey's final scenes for the show was 'absolutely horrendous.' Tovey's character George, a series regular since the show's 2008 pilot, was killed off in Sunday night's series four premiere Eve of the War. 'I don't think I've cried so much on set ever in my life,' Crichlow told BBC Newsbeat. 'Obviously Russell was the original from the pilot stage and I don't think there was a dry eye in the house.' The actress described the final scenes featuring George, written by series creator Toby Whithouse, as 'heartbreaking. We cried a lot,' she admitted. 'Michael [Socha] and I shot the scene with him where he passes over, and it was fully charged.' Crichlow added that her character Annie and Socha's Tom will be 'grief-stricken' in the episodes that follow. 'They're a bit lost, a bit devastated,' she explained.

Alex Salmond is being urged to apologise by opposition politicians in Scotland after he used a term linked to Nazi Germany to describe a BBC adviser. Scotland's First Minister criticised the corporation after his planned appearance on a sport programme ahead of the Six Nations Scotland vs England Calcutta Cup rugby match was dropped on political grounds. Salmond suggested that the BBC was 'in thrall to Downing Street' and likened the corporation to 'tin-pot dictatorships.' But the most controversy came after he compared one of the corporation's advisers to a Gauleiter, a term given to provincial governors in Germany and the lands it conquered under Hitler. The term has also come to mean someone in authority who behaves in an overbearing manner, similarly to a 'little Hitler.' In response, Scottish Labour described the comments as an 'ugly smear,' while the Scottish Tories slammed Salmond's 'bully boy tactics.' Yes, dear blog reader, this is a Tory defending the BBC. No, I'm a bit gobsmacked myself. Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie called on Salmond to 'retract this slur on the integrity of the BBC.' it's funny isn't it. The BBC's suddenly every politicians bestest friend that am. Until the next time they think they can win a few votes by criticising them. Once again, dear blog reader, it's worth noting all politicans are scum. Speaking to the Sunday Herald, Salmond - whom this blogger considers to be an odious big-mouthed lard-bucket with shit for brains, albeit, with an occasional ability to say something wryly amusing - explained that his appearance on the show to discuss rugby had been arranged, but then a BBC adviser called him to cancel. Salmond then said: 'The political Gauleiter we should call him now, intervened to say this shouldn't happen and, really, he's lost the plot.' He added that people like the unnamed adviser are 'in thrall to Downing Street now and that is actually the worrying thing. What this means is that an editorial decision, a journalistic decision on the BBC by the sports editor, has been overridden for political reasons by the political advisers. That's what you get in tin-pot dictatorships. You're not meant to get it in the BBC.' Opposition leaders were quick to pounce on the comments, including Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson saying: 'Now we have the First Minister himself using words like "dictatorship" and "Gauleiter" to attack a BBC official for daring to deny him his face on the television.' Kindly remember that, Ruth, the next time your scum pals at the Daily Scum Mail and the Daily Scum Express and the Torygraph are giving the BBC a damned good kicking over some agenda-based lice-ridden twat-bollocks. 'It is a completely inappropriate outburst from a man supposed to be running Scotland, and symptomatic of the SNP's "attack mode" where they try to destroy anyone with whom they disagree,' she continued. Scottish Labour external affairs spokeswoman Patricia Ferguson MSP said: 'People want the first minister to get behind the team, not get on television. What is totally unacceptable, however, is for the First Minister to accuse journalists of occupying the post of a Nazi district leader. That is an ugly smear. Maybe he doesn't understand quite how offensive that term is, in which case he should withdraw it today. But if he is familiar with what the term means, that is a far more serious breach of the standards expected of his high office and he must apologise for it.' A spokesman for Salmond said that the first minister was 'rightly referring to over-officious BBC officials, and the real concerns about editorial decisions taken by BBC journalists being overruled by bureaucrats on political grounds.' Which, hopefully, the BBC will remember the next time the odious Salmon wants to come on Question Time to push his latest policy. He added: 'As the Sunday Herald copy says, "the term has come to mean an overbearing bureaucrat." That is unacceptable, and the first minister will be raising the issue with Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, when he meets him in Edinburgh on Thursday. The first minister didn't complain when he was compared on the BBC to Robert Mugabe, and the opposition parties' obsession with trying - and failing - to do down the SNP is clearly causing them to ignore the real issue of editorial independence.' A spokesman for the BBC said that the corporation must give 'due impartiality' across all of its output, and so featuring Salmond and not any other political leader on the rugby show would have been unfair. 'Given the nature of political debate around Scotland's future and the proximity of local government elections in Scotland, it was decided that it would be inappropriate to give undue prominence at the moment to any single political leader in the context of the Scotland-England game,' he said.

On the eve of Charles Dickens's two hundredth birthday celebrations, the Victorian author's latest biographer, Claire Tomalin, has spoken out about today's children being 'ill-equipped' to 'appreciate' his works. Despite his books remaining 'amazingly relevant', she fears that the readers of the future will be denied the joys of his atmospheric tales - simply because they are 'too long' and make great demands on their readers' concentration. She said: 'Today's children have very short attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television programmes which are flickering away in the corner. Children are not being educated to have prolonged attention spans and you have to be prepared to read steadily for a Dickens novel and I think that's a pity.' Dickens's bi-centenary this week will be marked with a series of events around the UK. Tomalin will herself be attending the wreath-laying ceremony at the writer's grave in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner, where the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, as well as the actor Ralph Fiennes, will also be present. A street party will also be held in the Portsmouth road where Dickens was born, while a global read-a-thon will see twenty four countries celebrate the novelist's work. Stressing Dickens's cultural importance, Tomalin added: 'Very simply, he is, after Shakespeare, the greatest creator of English literature. Everything he wrote about in the 1840s is still relevant: the great gulf between rich and poor, corrupt financiers, corrupt members of parliament, how the country is run by Old Etonians – you name it, he said it.' Indeed. And, if he was around today, he'd be writing for EastEnders, one of 'dreadful' television programmes Tomalin is so dismissive of.

Speaking of rank and unpleasant snobbery, dear blog reader, check out this. Which, with its sneering tone and crass arrogance has put this blogger off ever reading anything that Antonia Senior ever had to say. About anything.

A faith healing television channel has been fined twenty five thousand smackers by media regulator Ofcom over a series of breaches, including a televangelist who claimed that he could help individuals with serious illnesses using 'miracle olive oil soap.' Believe TV, operated by The Light Academy Ltd, broadcasts a schedule of 'faith' programmes on Sky, including alleged 'testimony' from members of churches about how their health, financial and personal problems have been alleviated through healing from a pastor or other religious leader. However, a series of programmes broadcast on the channel between 21 December 2010 and 1 February 2011 featured breaches so serious that Ofcom has opted to impose a twenty five grand penalty payable to the HM Paymaster General. The content included televangelists, pastors and religious leaders making claims about the effectiveness of their healing techniques. In one sequence, televangelist Paul Lewis preached directly to the camera about the healing power of using his 'Miracle Olive Oil Soap.' Another featured Bishop Climate Irungu showcasing the 'testimonies' of his congregation members in a way that 'clearly encouraged' viewers to believe that treatment of serious illnesses such as cancer, diabetes and heart problems could be boosted by 'being anointed with a product such as olive oil soap, Ribena or oil.' Ofcom said: 'Given that the content was also soliciting a response from viewers and such individuals experiencing serious illnesses may be vulnerable to the healing claims being made, Ofcom found there was a material risk that susceptible members of the audience may be exploited by the material broadcast on Believe TV.' Ofcom further noted that other content featuring Paul Lewis on Believe TV and other channels had caused previous breaches of the broadcasting and advertising codes. 'The finding also referred to previous decisions by both the Advertising Standards Authority and Ofcom concerning content containing similar claims by Paul Lewis which had been broadcast on other channels,' said the regulator. 'When Ofcom had previously recorded breaches against Paul Lewis content broadcast on other channels in 2007 and 2008, Ofcom stated that the breaches were very serious because the promotions of the Paul Lewis products improperly exploited the susceptibilities of vulnerable viewers of these religious channels.' The regulator criticised The Light Academy for allowing previous breaches to be repeated, and said that the licencee showed 'overall very poor compliance' which 'placed vulnerable viewers directly at risk of harm and exploitation.'

And so to yer actual Keith Telly Topping's 45 of the Day. Anybody fancy a drink?