Monday, May 14, 2012

Mail fumes that Glitter gets gold

As part of its 1970s season, BBC Two re-repeated one of the 1977 Top Of The Pops that have been delighting BBC Four viewers since the start of the year. They chose one with Gary Glitter in - understandable, as nearly the rest of the year's selections to date have been Manhattan Transfer or Lynsey DePaul doing Rock Bottom forever.

The Daily Mail doesn't understand:

Convicted sex offender Gary Glitter stand to get paid thousands of pounds in royalties after the BBC aired a repeat of him performing on Top of the Pops in 1977.
Viewers were left outraged by TV chiefs' decision to rerun the BBC2 programme featuring the disgraced pop star, 68, on Saturday night.
Many expressed their disgust on social networking sites that Glitter, who has been convicted of possessing child porn and abusing two young girls, would receive money from the airing of the TV programme.
Oddly, though, they struggle to find "many", relying on a handful of tweets:
Kristian Carter ‏tweeted: 'Gary Glitter on TOTP. First line "Cuddle me close. Hold me tight." Awkward turtle.'

Another viewer Cath Elliot wrote: 'Gary Glitter on #totp77 is making my skin crawl.'
Neither of those quotes actually seem to have anything to say about the issue of Glitter earning royalties. In fact, the entire Mail thesis is based on one tweet:
RedLiverbirdLou wrote on Twitter: 'Why are BBC2 giving Gary Glitter airtime? They should be ashamed! I don't pay my licence to watch Peado's!'
Peados. Presumably some sort of hairstyle on a vegetable?

Well done, though, RedLiverbirdLou - your single Tweet has generated an entire Daily Mail article. Presumably her equally impassioned call for a vet to be sent for to help the meerkat on Planet Earth Live is going to result in a full-page piece in tomorrow's paper: "Viewers call for medical intervention as BBC watches creature die".


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

them "thousands of pounds" add up to a couple of hundred quid, too.

Simon said...

All granted, I don't quite understand why, given the best part of four months' Pops (if we're only counting those featured on BBC4 thus far) to choose from, they chose one of the two featuring the popular press bogeyman of bogeymen. And why was Glitter left in? Because Jonathan King was cut out of a 1976 show and complained... as reported (with no end of sideline) in the Mail

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

Surely, though, the idea that Gary Glitter would pop up on television doing pop songs in the 1970s is something strange of itself, viewed from 2012? The fact the lyrics he was singing were awkward, with hindsight, adds to it... doesn't it?

Mikey said...

I don't seek for one minute to excuse Glitter's transgressions agains decency but we're still watching vintage Stones & Zeppelin clips on TV.

Bill Wyman and Jimmy Page both had well-documented predilections for under-aged girls.

Indeed, if you're to believe Simon Napier Bell much of 60s & 70s pop industry was a chicken farm that happened to produce a few songs along the way.

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