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Can we just see actually, if Asif here? He had a question about celebrity.
Oh yes. I just want to ask you, because if you want to be news values, you always highlight
with celebrities, so why do you do that? Why is it so important for celebrities to make
the news values? Asif, have you come from an organisation? No no, I'm in University.
Why is there an obsession with celebrity, well personally I can't stand it, and I think
that we didn't get a celebrity to front our one week series on disability, we got a person
who happened to be disabled who we happened to meet because we did a news story about
him at some point. Now, actually, why do people use celebrities? Because we are a celebrity
obsessed culture, I'm afraid, and because as programme makers, I understand why programme
makers take some of the decisions they take, I wish they would take them a little less
often because it gets just a bit boring but you can't turn on the television without celebrities
walking up mountains, or going to the North Pole, and I agree with you, it's just a bit
wearing, but actually what are we trying to do? We are trying to engage people in difficult
subjects sometimes, and sometimes that is how you do it. I used to work on Breakfast
and we got various celebrities for Breakfast on BBC One to go to Africa on some particular
project, and go to India on some particular trek or whatever, and we did it because we
thought that people, we might get more people to watch the programme because of it, that's
why we did it. Should we do it all the time? No we shouldn't. I'm not sure we do it all
the time in news, I mean I'm willing to be corrected on that, I don't feel as if news
is celebrities, I mean if you watch BBC News programmes there's very little celebrity news
in them. It has to be pretty kind of up there for it to make it into a BBC News programme.
I think that they're used as vehicles to sell stories and all sorts of other formats because
television executives think that celebrity sells. I mean I don't know, lots of people
will tell you that they didn't watch it just because a celebrity was in it, but they're
lying, and I'm sorry but I know what newspapers they buy and I know how many people buy those
newspapers every day and sometimes you get what you want, sometimes you get what you
deserve. I don't know, is that what it is? I don't know. One of the best pieces of television
I've ever seen was Jeremy Paxman's interview with Russell Brand on Newsnight, it was incredible,
and I don't know what the peg for the story was. I was going to say, what was Jeremy Paxman
doing interviewing Russell Brand? It was amazing! It was solid, it was substantial, it was interesting,
and it was long! It was about twelve minutes long, it was great. So I know what you're
saying, but it was not your standard celebrity rubbishy interview, it was great. I just think,
it may relate to what Asif has said, but one of the issues, one of the questions is should
the BBC be challenging celebrity obsessed culture and actually, rather than kind of
going along, not going along, but using it to your own ends. The simple answer to that
is yes, the BBC should be challenging that. but I think that if you took a, looked through
the different programmes on different channels, what the BBC is doing on BBC One and BBC Two
is very different to what you will see on Channel 4, Channel 5, ITV2 and all those other
digital channels at the end of my thing that I never watch, and I do notice every time
I skip past ITV2 on my way to the News Channel that there's something about Katie Price on
it, or Peter Andre, it's like a non stop diet of it, and I don't think you get that on BBC
channels, but I don't watch BBC Three very often, they didn't make it for me, maybe that's
celebrity obsessed, I don't know.