Bawdy Brand's Brits bits borderline but balanced

Ofcom have given their judgement on Russell Brand's stewardship of this year's Brit awards [pdf]. They dismissed most of the complaints about his jokes without batting an eye, but did give closer examination to two specific jokes:

“Let’s send actual love to Robbie Williams…get well England’s Rose. One day at a time old bean…Oh them bloody drugs. Curse them drugs they’re everywhere. What about the rumours David Cameron smoked drugs as a schoolboy? What worries me most is that he dressed up as a schoolboy to do it, the pervert. Though perhaps, let’s not condemn him regardless. Who among us didn’t smoke just a little bit of weed at school, just to take the edge off those irksome crack come-downs? Actually, as it turns out, it’s about as good an anti-drugs campaign as you’re going to get, don’t take drugs you might end up leader of the Tories with a face like a little painted egg”.

and

“…time to find out who has pierced
the hymen of awareness to ejaculate success into the uterus of popular culture”.

Ofcom decided, on balance, the two jokes just about scraped past the demands of a pre-watershed audience.

As regards older children and under-eighteens, our view is that, again although on the edge of acceptability, the comments were justified in the context of a humorous ‘tongue-in-cheek’ style expected at a music awards ceremony transmitted after 20:00.
Importantly, the overall context of the comments made by the presenter was not that
drugs were acceptable.

Yes, the threat of turning into David Cameron is hardly an advertisement for taking drugs, although we understand that until it was explained to Menzies Campbell that it was a joke, he was trying to cut a hole in a plastic water bottle.

We do love the precision of "well, that's what you'd expect at a music awards ceremony after eight o'clock at night" - of course, had it been a literary awards programme at 9.15, licences would have been revoked and the dogs of war loosened.

More surprisingly, EMAP's television channel The Hits has been caught flashing cunts, tits and wanks onscreen. The words, which flashed up on one of the on-screen premium rate text services with which they splatter their programming, have brought a stiff rebuke from Ofcom. EMAP explained that it had basically little to do with the service besides taking a share of the cash; the company to whom it had ceded all responsibility had managed to catch the attempts by bored viewers to see if they could get the words on the programme, but, for reasons unclear, the moderator had decided that cunt was a word that had a place during the afternoon and allowed the entries to go forward.