A bit hairy..
So the BBC has started a search for an older female newsreader. But as Gavin Esler pointed out on Newsnight last night - where are the newsreaders with beards? We've been trying to think of any current affairs broadcaster with facial hair - can't think of one - apart from the odd moustache on a reporter or two. Keith Graves on Sky News has a beard. Radio of course is a different matter:
Beards for news? What do you think?
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I can't bear hairy news readers.
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Ah, the lovely late lamented and much missed Brian Redhead.
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naughty step lucien!
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My mate reckons, men who grow beards are just too lazy to shave!
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Brian Redhead, much missed.
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I used to think Joshua Rosenberg (sometime political analyst BBC?) had his head on upside down when he sported a full beard as, he is as bald as a cote. The BBC was able to fulfill two politically correct slots with Joshua...a beard and bald in one.
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In his book containing letters between a senior and a junior demon, The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis describes how Lucifer initiated a diabolical plan to make women find men with beards unattractive. To make the natural state of man unfashionable and ensure that men would always subtley pervert their own appearance by shaving.
Tis an interesting thought. If we see a man with a big ole Moses beard, we are suspicious, associate it with terrorism or religious extremism.
With the possible exception of Santa Claus and Captain Birdseye, beards are frowned upon.
I'd love to live on a desert island for a year, just to see what my hair and beard would look like if they were unkempt and I didn't shave.
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What happened to the dashing Errol Flynn Tash?
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I know BBC DG Mark Thompson has asked the News Director to recruit a female newsreader aged over 50 for its news team, but I didn't realise he'd insisted she should have a beard. 50 plus newsreader sought.
Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has called for the BBC to actively recruit more Conservatives to its news team. They don't normally come with beards, though I'm sure it could be arranged - or plaited. Conservative Newsreader Sought. But it doesn't really matter if they're a radio broadcaster or newsreader. We only know they have facial hair if we hear them supping their capucccino ten minutes after they drank it.
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Nick Robinson was national chairman of the Young Conservatives in the 1980s, and there are many other formerly young Conservatives in BBC news - which makes Jeremy Hunt's statement a little bit scary.
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Brian Blessed should read the news in his inimitable sty lee.
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Is 'Shadow Culture Secretary' not rhyming slang?
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Could it be ...?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Nils-Blyth/1397358047
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Well if 'tis he, he doesn't look a bit like I imagined, but then that's almost always true of people you only know as radio voices.
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Carolyn. Thank you for the point to muse on.
Beards are too distracting. Out of place.
Brian Blessed mentioned, David Bellamy and James Robertson Justice years ago - would look odd without them. But again - out of place. In films - whenever Roger Moore wore a beard I imagined it (beard) had a separate dressing room on set and news reading wise. Remember Reginald Bosanquet? His hair - top of head hair - become the main item of news. Suggestions made as to whether it was real or a syrup? If the latter and it slipped over - under his chin - ah!
No beards - except on radio.
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14 AnneP
Had you imagined him in tights?
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FJD - 4 tell your mate he's got that one spot on.
Have a beard = too lazy to shave.
(Yes I do have a beard)
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There is one problem. Beards and microphones don't mix. It sounds similar to a cat scratching a post.
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I watched Newsnight last night and Gavin Esler spent 20mins on was Brown snubbed, is Britain slipping in the US love charts and then where are the newsreaders with beards.
Newsnight is supposed to be a serious programme probing in-depth into important issues. What has happened?
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I wonder if Eddie will do a train blog from his iphone en route to Wells today?
This evenings Any Questions:
Eddie Mair chairs the topical debate from Wells in Somerset. The panellists are the secretary of state for culture, media and sport Ben Bradshaw, shadow defence secretary Liam Fox, the Liberal Democrats' home office spokesperson Chris Huhne, and businesswoman Deborah Meaden, from the TV show Dragons' Den.
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#20. jonnie
"I wonder if Eddie will do a train blog from his iphone en route to Wells today?"
Yes and we know what he will write, "I'm on the train, yeah good ain't it".
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Wrath - me too. If shaving takes 5 minutes a day, then a beard = just over 30 hours a year extra in bed.
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Sid - that's an excellent point. I shall have to remember that when Mrs. Wrath complains about it ;-)
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Lucien - somewhere on this blog, there was a photo of the lovely Nils "snowed in" during the February snowfalls. As I remember, it was the excuse for why he couldn't get into the studio. Except he seemed to be standing on about - oooh, maybe an inch of snow? Anyway, the point being that he looked nothing like that chap whose photo you've just put a link to.
No, that man is definitely auditioning for a newsreading job with the BBC.
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This picture claims to be of Nils...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/the_money_programme/673957.stm
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Another hairy point (:-),
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/aug/31/military.prisonsandprobation
So much for 'young thugs cured by military service'?
Can we look at that tonight, Sequin?
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Meanwhile, in the absence of an AM glass box, did anyone hear 'Feedback'? With our own Jo?
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fJd 4, So, your mate shaves?
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25 VH
I think he looks more distinguished in the beard photo.
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Yes, Frances - I thought Jo was v good. If people want the plain news, there's plenty around - there's no compulsion to listen to PM (well, there is for some of us ...)
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FO 27, Yes, I commented on it last night's PM Glass Box as the AM Glass Box hasn't appeared.
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This comment has been referred to the moderators. Explain.
Quite, Sid.
PM is a current affairs programme. Broader remit, as I've just posted elsewhere. News is at 6pm, 1800 hrs.
I think Eric is off doing Any Qs and neglected to get up at 4 in the morning to do us a box. Selfish, selfish. The rest of the team will have been busy getting ready for 'Feedback'.
You can come out now, it was OK.
Hello, Sequin!
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Maybe there are very few on this board who are deaf or hearing impaired for obvious reasons. But one wonders if this may be linked to lip-reading being easier if one does not have a beard ? Or am I being silly ?
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Bimbos, Beardies and Wrinklies! I suppose that there are some reasons where, when selecting newsreaders, the appearance in front of camera counts. Personally, I have yet to hear any mention of choosing newsreaders based on what they have between their ears.
H.
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How justified would Iran be in expecting an attack on her, come what may in hte next year or two? I ask because I've heard that weapons of mass destruction stuff somewhere before, as well as the need for regime change.
How could Iran deter such an attack?
The West often accuses countries with governments it disapproves of, of being undemocratic forgetting dictatorships it approves of. Venuzuela and now Iran in the former case and Saudi in the latter, I think. How can Iran ensure that the US and UK are not involved in subversion there, as under Mossadeq (and Allende in Chile)
Is there any sign that Obama is re-orientating those American attitudes and practices?
Incidentally, but very very vitally, is there any sign of Obama help for Kenya yet?
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I can't remember what I said! Who is it doing the referring.
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36
In fairness to Obama there are plenty of signs that the stance of the US is changing.
In his Cairo speech Obama acknowledged the 1953 CIA coup in Iran and condemned it. Civic opposition within contemporary Iran is far more potent than any US organised external subversion.
Relations with Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba are moving in the right direction - slowly perhaps, but in the right direction. America has also gone much further than many would have expected in condemning the Honduran military coup.
The world's a complex place; sometimes America's right, sometimes it's wrong and occasionally it's irrelevant. America's enemies shouldn't automatically and uncritically be our friends.
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38
;...the CIA coup....?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
The BBC itself gave the order, of course, and much more
'The BBC spearheaded Britain's propaganda campaign, broadcasting the go-code launching the coup d'état against Iran's elected government' (From the linked site)
The usual stuff about dictatorship when really it was Britain herself planning to install an unelected governement
What sort of BBC was that then?
10. tells us indirectly. It is of course instructive how many of the 'people of opinion' the BBC calls on are very right wing - Melanie Philips, Ann Leslie etc, and how the left wing ones are really liberals rather than socialists.
To underplay the BBC and Britain's role in that coup is to risk not paying the proper critical attention to the BBC in present Iranian matters and to risk not seeing and so not condemning current British supported subversion in Iran.
All in all we should make sure Obama isn't leaving the dirty tricks to Britain entirely this time by washing his own hands and turning a blind eye on Britain's chicanery.
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39
So it should have been Mark Thompson apologising for the coup against Mossadeq, not President Obama?
ETE / Peoples Mandate etc - I tried to respond thoughtfully to your post #36, discussing the points which you raised. This in the hope of creating some serious political conversation which you claim to crave.
Your reply is completely bizarre - you don't appear to have read past the first few words of my contribution because nothing that you've said relates to it.
I don't intend bothering to engage with you again.
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Lucien - join the club.
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Do you know what gets on my ____'s.
Its all this carping on about what this country or Europe or the West done in the past at some time to some other country.
Lets look at now and things that people now are responsible for.
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#39. ExpectingtheEnd
Yes the BBC is overflowing with right wing comentators.
Let alone ex-tory polititians and thatcherites.
The talking to Tories like Clark, Lamont, Lawson, Hesletine and Major as if they are elder statesmen and have such wisdom to pass on to us. I am sorry but they are Tories through to their cores and were useless when they were in government. Being a lord does not make you wise.
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40
I think you are being a bit over - sensitive.
I thought my 39 said 'Meassge acknowledged, l-d, wrt to the US, but are we paying enough attention to Britain's roles in these matters? Sometimes the BBC has been cats-paw. Following on from your 10, it's worrying too that no genuine radicals are A list BBC opinionators'
If I didn't express concerns about the way Presidents in some ways radical get embroiled in foreign adventures (Kennedy and Johnson) it was because I took it you had that covered when you expressed an optimism I'd like to share about Obama.
Ignore Sid.
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43
So true!!!!
42
Yeah ,but, no but, they've got previous and fingers in pies is all. OK, I'll travel with the Wilburies 'The best y' can do is forgive.', they said.
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30 and 33 both seem to be arguing from is to ought. Because the programme fails to be a news programme it should so fail, is another way of saying what you both seem to be saying.
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I haven't read all of the above rubbish, but PM is NOT a news program. It is NEWS AND COMMENT. You want news, hang around until six o'clock.
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David,
For information my mate says she shaves on a daily basis.
PM needs to make up its mind if its a news and currant affairs program or, a magazine program al a TVs 'This Morning' where, they find it quite acceptable to flip from the sublime to the ridiculous on a regular basis. I'm not against light hearted banter from time to time but I don't want it to remind me of an episode of Blue Peter or (God forbid) the colour they painted that shed on Gardeners world. There has been enough dumbing down in tele without it creeping into the wireless too. And before you start crying that serious debate programs are catted for on other programs...Not at peek times there not...why not? Yes have fun by all means but don't turn it into trivia...this is how the gullible British public get duped into not knowing the difference between serious public issues and comedy items and can be a tool of manipulation. But then what is the media?
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48 fJd
That's all well and good, but with Paul O'Grady reported to be leaving Channel 4 there's going to be a huge 5pm 'talk' audience available for PM to grab.
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LD (49)
The BBC do not have to grab ratings as, they are funded by a pole tax. Paul O'Grady, isn't that the chap who used to dress up as a foul mouthed scouse woman?
Point made!
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A pole tax?
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LD (51)
Yes, A poll Tax. But if they could find a way of taxing the poles, I'm sure the government would try that too.
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fJd 48, I can't say that I have ever heard PM discuss currants, but I make redcurrant wine and a nice redcurrant jam.
I once complained to the BBC that Songs of Praise was being dumbed down and wasn't religious enough (that's an edited version of what I said because you can't talk about breasts here). I got a reply saying, among other things, that SoP wasn't supposed to be a religious program.
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40 and 45
...and the first test of my new attitude under your tutelege came very quickly.
Idly scrolling through Ceefax news headlines, this afternoon, I came across
GERMAN GENERAL ELECTION
and found myself thinking, on the basis of a real temporary misreading and bitterness
'Well, that's real progress, they vote a military/political figure into power and then.......'
And then I reconstrued Ceefax's words and I remembered yours. I thought 'Let history bury history', and instead thought about the German attack on the stranded petrol tankers and the civilain deaths that doesn't seem to have done Merkel any electoral harm at all.
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