Were you serious with "We can all agree on one thing. This is hilarious"?

"Russell Brand, 33", "78 year old actor", "Ross, 47" - it's the classic local paper obsession with age. Said Skirky, 44.

with Ross. He's ruined Gervais for me and now Brand.

This is the overpaid, overexposed celeb equivalent of putting a dog turd in a paper bag, placing it on someone's doorstep, setting it on fire and then ringing the doorbell before running away.

I think the subtext of the emphasis on the age of those involved is intended to be: "Yes, folks, there are some 47 year old men out there who actually find this sort of thing funny."

Let us not forget, also, that Mr Sachs has more talent in his little finger than the idiots Ross and Brand combined.

I wish they would both sod off. They are not funny, never have been and never will be.

The sheer nastiness of the act is indefensible. The senior BBC suit who OK'ed the broadcast (it was a pre-record, naturally) should also walk the plank. Widening the net a little, Lesley Douglas can bugger off too - her obsession with putting TV 'personalities' on Radios 2 & 6 has reversed a lot of the progress her predecessor achieved. It's as if she believes radio is easier than telly, something one listen to Brand's weekly car crash of a show will disprove.

his speed to apologise is entirely in accord with his hilarious "joke" in the first place - winding up and upsetting a decent senior chap. Clearly he is a spineless twat.

to announce to f***** his granddaughter. Contemptible Assholes.

his own press it wouldn't be easier to ring up the grandparents of people he's not slept with!

I'm glad everyone's finally come round to my view that Russel Brand just isn't that funny. As for Ross he's got enough of our cash not care anymore and is just recycling smut until the day he get's the push, he just doesn't care anymore I avoid his tv and radio shows whenever possible.

Can be genuinely funny and witty on the radio and actually pleasant, intelligent and respectful of interviewees in that medium. So it's mystifying to me how he can be such a smut-obsessed arsehole at times on his TV show, and when hanging out with Brand. He seems to have 2 identities. It appears he will say anything for the frisson of near the knuckle one-liners and jokes, which when he's presented the Comedy Awards show a nasty frame of mind at times, yet are at least sharp. But this is incomprehensible, beyond the pale stuff - not funny in any way. And there's nothing redeeming about Brand that I can see.

Doesn't seem to me that the BBC should accept this kind of shitbrained, infantile showing off but they will and they will dare to call it entertainment.

posting their names in the section for a good slapping.

However I think it's time they were taken round the back for a good smacking from "the lads" instead. With knuckledusters.

Fer chrissake...you don't mess with Manuel.

the rozzers didn't charge him, after the "sex attacker" call, with wasting police time. Twat.

that our culture treats meaningless apologies, whose only purpose is to get the apologiser off the hook, as signifying anything.

I will put up my hand and say I like Ross & Brand normally. I'm curious about the fact that the show went out a week ago & I listened to the podcast with the Sachs calls in it last Monday: So why the delayed reaction? Was no-one offended between Tuesday - Friday? Maybe someone with some media savvy can explain how an event like this takes a few days to percolate into news.

To be honest, I'd say it is probably my favourite thing on the radio, I may go as far as to say one of the greatest things on any radio station in many years. I haven't heard this particular show and he can be close to the knuckle but in general they are enormously witty, erudite, self deprecating and often genuinely shocking and unlike anything you are likely to hear anywhere else.
I can't say I care much for anything he does on TV (but then TV is a an inferior to medium to radio in many ways) but I would urge all the naysayers above to listen to his radio show with an open mind and I'm pretty sure you will be pleasantly surprised. He has a fairly tedious taste in music so the best way is to podcast it since they remove all the tracks.

Because hardly anyone listens to it. It's a weekly puff piece for Lesley Douglas( 'See how down I am with the kidz - I've got Brand'). Sorry Dr & Niks, it's an excruciatingly infantile listen fronted by the man with the worst radio voice since Alan Partidge.
Bring back The Critical List with Brother Maconie!

RB's show is regularly one of the top three podcasts in the country, so an awful lot of people heard those phone messages over the course of a week before they made a dint in the national press. That's a disconnect which is interesting to me.

I'll agree that RB is a very incongruous presence on Radio 2, I'm not sure what youngsters would stay in on a Saturday night just to tune in to Radio 2. RB's pseudo-amateurish radio freefall makes more sense as a podcast.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7692911.stm

but he goes too far. And there seems to be no acceptance that going too far on a Radio 2 show is less distance than going too far doing stand up in club or theatre.

... for these gits in their perpetual backslapping circle is a proper shooing from another, funnier, comedy outfit.
Mitchell and Webb, or even Enfield and Whitehouse, we need you to do a Smashy and Nicey job on Ross, Brand, Gervais and Brydon. I'm sick of all four - despite their varied and variable talents, the chummy in-joke stuff has gone too far. Indeed, it's very similar to the questionable practical jokes DLT and his cohorts used to get up to. The worst is Jonathan 'And I weally, genuinely, enjoyed...' Ross, who seems to believe he is head of light entertainment at the BBC and can exalt or insult anyone in the biz.

that Russell Brand seems to be an occasionally very funny but essentially very mixed up man whose working out his "issues" in public and a significant part of the public are mixing his very sad state with humour. (Didn't he manage to annoy Rod Stewart and one of his daughters a little while ago, too?) It's train crash humour and says as much about those who find it funny as it does about Brand.

As for Ross, I think he comes out of this as a complete pr*t. Which sums up his last 10 years or so of work, or at least the increasingly few bits of it I've had the misfortune to witness.

I'm cut off from most of what goes on in the UK at a popular culture/entertainment level, so I know next to nothing about these people, haven't heard the offending show and never will. But what on earth has Andrew Sachs got to do with any of this bollocks? Did he do anything to deserve it? Or is it just inherantly funny to offend an elderly bloke? Does the fact that he used to be on the telly make him fair game?
Jaw-dropping crassness and offensiveness seems to be the new funny.
I'm only 36, don't live in Tunbridge Wells and have never, and will never, read the Daily Mail, but this has made me flipping angry. From an admittedly uninformed position we do seem to be plumbing new depths here.

... Sachs was supposed to appear on the show and then pulled out. The production team had his phone number so RB and JR thought it would be hilarious to call him.

The thing about this is the programme, or at least that segment of it, was pre-recorded according to reports in The Guardian. The BBC has a department called Compliance where programme makers have to list potentially dodgy areas of content and explain why they did it. While things are tricky with live shows every pre recorded one has to be put through this process before it is broadcast. Among the areas which have to be highlighted are "covert recordings" and "references to public figures." While this wasn't quite covert it's certainly a bit dodgy, and if it didn't go out live, some boss should have spotted that it was in a very dodgy area.

Mind you, Brand is crap, his show is awful and Jonathan Ross is an overpaid oaf and if all this gets them kicked off air in the near future then we will owe Andrew Sachs a debt of thanks for far more than playing Manuel.

The only way for this country to avoid slipping over the brink into hell (if it hasn't already) is for the BBC - funded by us, in case it's forgotten - to immediately fire Brand, Ross and the management responsible.

I failed to see (a) the humour and (b) the point of this tirade of filth hurled at a 78-year-old well-respected, scandal-free whose only 'failing' seemed to be not being available for a pre-planned interview. What the hell has he ever done that would deserve this sort of drivel?

So Brand has apologised? So what? If a member of the public had left messages like this on my machine, I'd be talking to the police right now, and when it came to court an apology from them would not be good enough. They would be looking at a fine and community service at the very least.

If the BBC - once one of the world's most respected broadcasters, a name synonymous with quality (how long ago that seems now) - continues paying countless millions to a man whose idea of humour is the sort of prank primary school pupils would have considered immature, then there is no hope for us.

And as for Brand: we started watching his recent stand-up show on C4, and turned off after the millionth reference to sex or his organs. God knows, we're no prudes, but surely the point of stand-up is to be funny, not just batter a point into submission. Derek'n'Clive was endless filth, but at least it was funny and managed to stray off into interesting tangents. Russell Brand's whole act, it seems, is: "I have lots of sex. Isn't that funny?"

No. It's not. Put little Russell away and go look for a joke, Mr Tedious.

There was a point when writers/comedians/performers knew the boundaries and could make a career out of pushing and prodding them - once the the tradition of ‘nudge nudge wink wink’ got tarred with the Bernard Manning/Benny Hill brush and regarded as passe and past it - anything went. It’s become more about being edgy rather than entertaining.

Equally light entertainment is seen as short hand for lighweight
If it something isn't seasoned with grotesques and sweary show offs it's regarded as flippant and throw away.

to Peter Cook and Derek & Clive. As far as I can recall the utterly filthy Derek & Clive came on (steady - Ed.) an LP that was probably plastered with warning stickers. In much the same way as Roy Chubby Brown DVDs now. So you had to buy this stuff for your smutty chat and innuendo, if that is your bent (you've been warned - Ed.)

Perhaps it is right to assume that Russell Brand is broadcast after the watershed and is likely to contain similar smut. Not so the podcast which would make him available to all and sundry ages, hence breaking the rules. It is up to m'lud to decide if he was breaking the law but unless he has burned down the houses of parliament I cannot see the rozzers showing any interest. See umpteen cases of Slebs v Plebs.

I remember with fondness the short-lived chat show hosted by Peter Cook on BBC1. He read out a letter of complaint from a dischuffed viewer and proceeded to ring them live on air. Not to let rip with expletives but to ask the stunned viewer what he thought was wrong with the show. True to form the chap was watching ITV at the time. A gem.

... for more opinions on the subject of Ross you may wish to check out my blog of 31st august 'Jonathan Ross - Chat show boss or absolute dross?' in which many contributors make it clear that they find him smutty, adolescent, self-serving and so on. As people in Liverpool might eloquently phrase it - 'IT'S TIME TO DO ONE SOFT LAD!'

The updated BBC charter from 2007 -

Sustaining citizenship and civil society.
Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence.

And what a very citizen-minded, civilised, creative and culturally excellent phone call that was.

It's obvious - Ross wants to become Brand - hero worships him for doing what Ross has always been too conservative to do - i.e. walk the talk. Ross has always been similar to the school virgin - talks about sex so much it makes one wonder whether he's had/is getting any (and, if so, other than through a hole in the blanket)

Perhaps they should be put in a Cronenberg Fly-style pod and fused to creat one great ravaged smut-meister: Bross or Rand.

The BBC has banned them both. Ross on his radio show is not bad but Brand is dreadful. I have never understood how people find him funny. He's been sacked from most previous jobs so lets hope he's sacked from this and sods off to America to appear in crap comedies

I don't know,maybe I'm too decrepit and have lost whatever mental acuity I ever possessed,but I feel that I need Lesley Douglas to come out and explain to me (and others here?)where was the point at which peurile,schoolboy smut-and willy wagging-became the default replacement for genuine "edgy" and "risk taking" comedy.Even though the very descriptions "edgy" and "risk taking" tend to make me want to run a mile.
I prefer funny myself.

The BBC site said: Mr Sachs has told the BBC that on the day the show was recorded, "the producer called me on my mobile to ask whether they could play the recording in question. The signal was poor and I couldn't really hear what was being played down the line to me."

Surely, he would have already received the actual answerphone messages, which would have been more clear. Did this not confuse anyone else?

No offense to the guy obviously, it's not very pleasant, but I think we can all agree it's got a bit out of hand now.

...I've been away. And, in fact, while I was on my way there, I did something I hardly ever do: I listened to Russell Brand's radio show. A couple of things struck me: firstly, that he wasn't as unfunny as he usually is (I heard the latter Andrew Sachs material; I've since read a transcript of the earlier material, and it goes far too far) - on a long drive, I found myself smirking a little bit, as I do when I hear something that I know I'm not supposed to laugh at; but the other thing was that I couldn't believe that he was getting away with this on the cultural bastion that is BBC Radio 2. Not just the Andrew Sachs stuff that's getting all the press, but his going on and on about the power of his orgasms, and a truly surreal interview with Oliver Stone which featured the film director saying 'fuck'. I was taken by surprise, and at the time I found that enjoyable.

Anyway, I decided that Russell Brand wasn't all that bad after all and that he would be moving on from the constrictions of BBC Radio pretty soon. Jonathan Ross, on the other hand...

...or is he. Remember when there was the Jade Goody - Celebrity Big Brother outrage and he was hosting his own related show ('Big Mouth" or summat). He kept steering the studio audience away from any discussion of the 'race/bullying' issue which seemed a little mysterious until it turned out that they shared the same agent (along with the oh so forgiving Davina McCall). No 'dangerous' rocking the boat stuff on that occasion was there?

Why has it been so widely recorded that Brand rang up Andrew Sachs to brag about having had sex with his grand-daughter? Andrew Sachs was booked to do a radio interview with Russell Brand but for some reason (unprofessionalism?) failed to pick up the phone. Ross and Brand were left talking to an answering machine. Ross blurted out "he f*cked your granddaughter" - after which Brand made about four phonecalls apologising and trying to make light of it. So why is it repeatedly portrayed as if Brand rang up with the purpose of bullying and bragging. Even Andrew Sachs wasn't half as bothered by the episode as some of the self-righteous "moralists" in this country. Why do the media manipulate things and report purely for effect. And there have been many many more actual "lie" stories in the tabloids about Brand. To quote Brand himself: "If they are lying to you about something as ridiculous as me, what else are they lying to you about?"

They behaved like a pair of twerps and deserved some castigation (especially Ross who acts like an overgrown GCSE candidate much of the time. However this does not justify the Dail Mail instigated open-season on the BBC which now appears to be running scared for fear of another media backlash.