https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-48212693

Danny Baker is one of the finest and funniest broadcasters in this country, and having listened to and watched him for 20+ years, I can honestly say that he doesn't have a racist bone in his body. Now because of an unthinking tweet about the royal baby he has been sacked by bbc 5live. How is it that Frankie Boyle is allowed to make jokes about people with downs syndrome and Katie Price's blind disabled sun, but someone makes an inadvertently offensive joke about the royal baby his career is in ruins because of an over sensitive manager at the bbc. I'm sure an apology would have been sufficient.

I believe that the joke was a reference to a feature that he had in his show called "monkeys dressed as famous people". I'm sure that jk must have come across him at some point, having worked at the NME and in broadcasting for over 40 years and is one of the nicest people in show business. Its about time that the BBC considered the viewers and listeners and not just pandered to the snowflake minority.

Outrageous, stupid; the BBC is a joke these days.

I have seen Danny Baker live several times, had an opportunity to have a drink with which I declined. (Never meet your heroes rule)

He had a good music show on cable years ago with a very diverse panel, discussing albums. Even his music taste mostly consists of people of BAME.

Wasn't he good friends with Bob Marley also ?

BBC really are a crock of shit. Still being licence free saves me a small packet.

Yet again only white people are racist according to lefties.

He could go on talk radio and transfer his show to them, however it just wouldn't be the same. His specialism is radio phone-ins and on talk radio they just wouldn't have the audience to provide enough calls, and it would be full of adverts.

I hope that he still carries on his podcast with Gary Lineker, which is very entertaining, but is missing the call-in aspect. bbc stop getting rid of your best people and re-instate Danny Baker, it clearly wasn't a racist tweet.

robbiex wrote:
He could go on talk radio and transfer his show to them, however it just wouldn't be the same. His specialism is radio phone-ins and on talk radio they just wouldn't have the audience to provide enough calls, and it would be full of adverts.

I hope that he still carries on his podcast with Gary Lineker, which is very entertaining, but is missing the call-in aspect. bbc stop getting rid of your best people and re-instate Danny Baker, it clearly wasn't a racist tweet.

I would think LBC is more likely, and probably a better fit.

honey!oh sugar sugar. wrote:
robbiex wrote:
He could go on talk radio and transfer his show to them, however it just wouldn't be the same. His specialism is radio phone-ins and on talk radio they just wouldn't have the audience to provide enough calls, and it would be full of adverts.

I hope that he still carries on his podcast with Gary Lineker, which is very entertaining, but is missing the call-in aspect. bbc stop getting rid of your best people and re-instate Danny Baker, it clearly wasn't a racist tweet.

I would think LBC is more likely, and probably a better fit.

LBC is a cesspit.

Put simply - the racial trap (Meghan/Harry - offspring) was/is there, for those not smart enough to avoid it.

Baker jumped the gun, by a mile.

Such an experienced broadcaster - who has erred before - should have known better.

Blaming the BBC etc., is futile...

Sadly all too predictable by the BBC management. But I can't help thinking that Danny, deep down, had been looking for something like this to happen, and the same probably goes for his bosses. He's a brilliant broadcaster, and journalist, at his best, but he also has a tendency to get bored and restless. I felt his show had grown jaded, and him with it. He'd threatened before to retire or quit, and maybe this was him, out of boredom, rattling the cage and seeing what happened. He's not remotely racist, and he's a good guy, but, unlike Kenny Everett, he's not a broadcaster who brings lots of gifts to a show. Danny just brings himself, and in his case that's enough when he's on form and motivated, but not enough when he's tired and unmotivated. 5Live is probably the most infuriatingly po-faced channel on the BBC these days, obsessively and slavishly demographically driven, so he must have felt like some kind of circus exhibit there (yes, a bit like a comedy monkey). It's sad there are so few places for genuinely individual, independent spirits to flourish, or even just hang on, in radio these days.

A rather good post Pru; we've missed you.

Pru wrote:
Sadly all too predictable by the BBC management. But I can't help thinking that Danny, deep down, had been looking for something like this to happen, and the same probably goes for his bosses. He's a brilliant broadcaster, and journalist, at his best, but he also has a tendency to get bored and restless. I felt his show had grown jaded, and him with it. He'd threatened before to retire or quit, and maybe this was him, out of boredom, rattling the cage and seeing what happened. He's not remotely racist, and he's a good guy, but, unlike Kenny Everett, he's not a broadcaster who brings lots of gifts to a show. Danny just brings himself, and in his case that's enough when he's on form and motivated, but not enough when he's tired and unmotivated. 5Live is probably the most infuriatingly po-faced channel on the BBC these days, obsessively and slavishly demographically driven, so he must have felt like some kind of circus exhibit there (yes, a bit like a comedy monkey). It's sad there are so few places for genuinely individual, independent spirits to flourish, or even just hang on, in radio these days.

I disagree that the show has become jaded and that Danny was bored. I listen to the podcast every week and it is as good as ever. He constantly talks about how he is not given enough radio to do (only 1 show a week), even though he gets lots of rewards. The show relies heavily on phone-ins and this is what makes the show. The secret is to have subjects that only a few people can phone in for (e.g. stories about goats, inadvertent theft). Therefore the show wouldn't work on other channels like talksport where the number of listeners wouldn't yield enough callers. I think that bbc 4 should give him more work, after his excellent music documentaries in recent years, but I think he will proably go and work with his mate, Chris Evans at Virgin Radio, where he will lose 100,000s of listeners. He's been sacked before by 5live, so hopefully he will be back again very soon.

how shocking that I agree with Barney !!

I thought Baker's post was crass, vulgar, nasty and racist and he's a fucking liar if he thinks he can pretend it wasn't an ugly racist "joke" and his pathetic attempt to claim it was a "circus" joke is even more insulting.

Others miss the point: Danny Baker has been very much part of the "fabric" of the BBC and to try and isolate his tawdry racist tweet as though he is some sort of naughty boy and the Beeb reacted to that is ridiculous : he thought he could get away with because he's on the BBC and had power and if you pretend otherwise you are kidding yourselves..

But..and a very Big But here: to fire him is equally as ridiculous. He should have been reprimanded, perhaps out off air for a fortnight and his apology accepted.

Did you really truly think the BBC could be unfairly decimated by the ludicrous claims about Jimmy Savile and others that there would be no recriminations?

Baker is every much a victim of the determined attacks upon the BBC by private media corporate interests who hate it with a vengeance.

But Danny Baker is just being dumb for not realizing he too is dispensable and no matter how funny you find him..there are 100 others to take his place.

Yet Lord Alan Aspartame made a very vulgar tweet about black people a few months ago, didn't really apologise and is still a BBC star.
Sheer hypocrisy.

robbiex wrote:
Pru wrote:
Sadly all too predictable by the BBC management. But I can't help thinking that Danny, deep down, had been looking for something like this to happen, and the same probably goes for his bosses. He's a brilliant broadcaster, and journalist, at his best, but he also has a tendency to get bored and restless. I felt his show had grown jaded, and him with it. He'd threatened before to retire or quit, and maybe this was him, out of boredom, rattling the cage and seeing what happened. He's not remotely racist, and he's a good guy, but, unlike Kenny Everett, he's not a broadcaster who brings lots of gifts to a show. Danny just brings himself, and in his case that's enough when he's on form and motivated, but not enough when he's tired and unmotivated. 5Live is probably the most infuriatingly po-faced channel on the BBC these days, obsessively and slavishly demographically driven, so he must have felt like some kind of circus exhibit there (yes, a bit like a comedy monkey). It's sad there are so few places for genuinely individual, independent spirits to flourish, or even just hang on, in radio these days.

I disagree that the show has become jaded and that Danny was bored. I listen to the podcast every week and it is as good as ever.

Podcasts are not shows. In this case it's a heavily edited show. I'd be really surprised if an edited version sounded as jaded as the full length show, wouldn't you? I agree with the other poster, by his standards he'd started to sound bored. He was being saddled with often humour-free, and often very obscure, sporting guests, his sidekick was of little help and the regular spots, to me, seemed increasingly forced. I think he's an inspired broadcaster but Five Live was never a good fit for him.

I think he should have been sacked. His claims of ignorance that it was Meghan who was having a baby just aren't believable, especially from someone in the media. If they'd let him get away with this trickiness just with a slap on the wrist, it would have given the green light to everyone else that the baby and Meghan and anyone else with black ancestry are fair game. Not that this will likely stop others from testing the boundaries.

steveimp wrote:
Yet Lord Alan Aspartame made a very vulgar tweet about black people a few months ago, didn't really apologise and is still a BBC star.
Sheer hypocrisy.

Possibly..or it could be the BBC is now determined to have a Zero Policy of racist comments.

I would hope so because Britain's tabloid media is so overtly racist at times it's scary and it's why we are getting so-many Fascist groups forming.

Of course Sugar should have been booted but that doesn't excuse Baker.

The man is a football fan- he knows black players get called monkeys and apes at every match. He was being disingenuous by claiming he did not know that Meghan Markle's mother was black.

And if he really didn't know he's a blood danger to have on the radio.
The real problem here is that people seem to think Danny Baker is the victim.

The victims are all those 10,000s of black kids out there who experience racism every single day of their lives, whose parents did and who we (if you are white ) never ever ever experience because we are privileged because of our colour and that privilege is so ingrained we don't even know how privileged we are.

Danny Baker was racist. Whether he meant to offend or just be funny is immaterial. He attacked 100s and 100s of people either deliberately or inadvertently. Nether is forgivable.

Perhaps it was a Freudian Slip and he had read this report on the BC 4 days ago.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-48093032

Football racism: 'Monkey chants aimed at children'

The Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Football Forum (BFF) has begun collating grassroots experiences of discrimination from across the country.

Vice chair Ahmed Maravia, who runs a club in Leicester, said "little kids" often heard monkey chants and Islamophobic remarks at games.

hedda wrote:
He was being disingenuous by claiming he did not know that Meghan Markle's mother was black.
It wouldn't necessarily be possible to tell just by looking at Meghan that she was partly black but if he never caught a glimpse of her mother he must have avoided all media coverage of the wedding. Hard to believe of an ordinary person let alone a media person.

Rick wrote:
robbiex wrote:
Pru wrote:
Sadly all too predictable by the BBC management. But I can't help thinking that Danny, deep down, had been looking for something like this to happen, and the same probably goes for his bosses. He's a brilliant broadcaster, and journalist, at his best, but he also has a tendency to get bored and restless. I felt his show had grown jaded, and him with it. He'd threatened before to retire or quit, and maybe this was him, out of boredom, rattling the cage and seeing what happened. He's not remotely racist, and he's a good guy, but, unlike Kenny Everett, he's not a broadcaster who brings lots of gifts to a show. Danny just brings himself, and in his case that's enough when he's on form and motivated, but not enough when he's tired and unmotivated. 5Live is probably the most infuriatingly po-faced channel on the BBC these days, obsessively and slavishly demographically driven, so he must have felt like some kind of circus exhibit there (yes, a bit like a comedy monkey). It's sad there are so few places for genuinely individual, independent spirits to flourish, or even just hang on, in radio these days.

I disagree that the show has become jaded and that Danny was bored. I listen to the podcast every week and it is as good as ever.

Podcasts are not shows. In this case it's a heavily edited show. I'd be really surprised if an edited version sounded as jaded as the full length show, wouldn't you? I agree with the other poster, by his standards he'd started to sound bored. He was being saddled with often humour-free, and often very obscure, sporting guests, his sidekick was of little help and the regular spots, to me, seemed increasingly forced. I think he's an inspired broadcaster but Five Live was never a good fit for him.

The podcast is the full show, minus the news bulletins and lasts 1 hour and 50 minutes or so. To cut 10 minutes from a 2 hour show, could hardly be called heavily edited. The shows today in my opinion are as good as ever. If you say 5live isn't a good fit, then what would be a good fit? The show doesn't work without a big audience as you need a good supply of people to phone in for the obscure subjects.

Jo wrote:
hedda wrote:
He was being disingenuous by claiming he did not know that Meghan Markle's mother was black.
It wouldn't necessarily be possible to tell just by looking at Meghan that she was partly black but if he never caught a glimpse of her mother he must have avoided all media coverage of the wedding. Hard to believe of an ordinary person let alone a media person.

He never claimed that he didn't know that Meghans mother wasn't black. He suggested that he may have forgotten which princess was having a baby. This is understandable since they are having so many these days and not everyone is interested, and Baker doesn't have a mobile phone, so he is not staring at his phone all day. Baker was often posting pictures of monkeys dressed as celebrities, so he posted this one without thinking. Do you honestly think that he posted this image thinking, "I'm going to post a tweet to illustrate the fact that I think black people are like monkeys". This was a slip of the mind and shouldn't ruin peoples lives. If the press hadn't highlighted it then only a few people would have seen it, and if the bbc hadn't deliberately censored the image it wouldn't have caused faux outrage.

hedda wrote:

Of course Sugar should have been booted but that doesn't excuse Baker.

...................

Danny Baker was racist. Whether he meant to offend or just be funny is immaterial. He attacked 100s and 100s of people either deliberately or inadvertently. Nether is forgivable.

[/quote]

Interesting how forgiving and understanding posters on this board are towards certain crimes and misunderstandings but not others


I have known Danny Baker for many years and he isn't a racist. He likes poking fun and has no time for the rich and privelged who only have family money as a defining characteristic. His explanation (which i believe) is that he wanted to make a joke about the royal baby and looked in his library of many funny images to use for a twitter post. He never took time to think of how inappropriate the use of the chimp was given Megan's heritege. He knew about Megan being mixed race but he is a busy man and at that moment he didn't stop and make the connection.

I can see how that happened. What I can't see is how that makes him racist or how a mistake like that isn't forgiveable

BBC thinks everyone is racist.