The BBC is hoping that its decision to suspend Jonathan Ross for 12 weeks will end the crisis caused by crude prank phone calls he made with Russell Brand on a radio show, media commentators said on Friday.
While newspapers generally welcomed the corporation’s action against Ross, one of the BBC’s highest paid presenters, the decision by Lesley Douglas, the head of Radio 2, to quit over the furor was greeted with sadness.
The BBC acted on Thursday after the “deplorable” messages left on actor Andrew Sachs’ phone drew 30,000 complaints, criticism from Prime Minister Gordon Brown and media condemnation.
Following an emergency meeting between BBC Director-General Mark Thompson and the BBC Trust, the BBC’s independent governing body, Ross, 47, was suspended without pay but kept his job for what Thompson described as his “utterly unacceptable” behavior.
However, Thompson said it was a “final warning” for Ross, who has been suspended for 12 weeks.
Douglas, who was appointed controller of the music and chat station in 2003, then made the decision to quit.
The prank had already led to the resignation of Brand, 33, a flamboyant comic who has branched out into acting in Hollywood films including the romantic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
The row erupted after the duo joked Brand had slept with the granddaughter of 78-year-old Sachs, who played Spanish waiter Manuel in the cult comedy series Fawlty Towers.
They also joked that Sachs might kill himself after hearing messages left on his phone.
Newspapers said the BBC had taken far too long to take action and Douglas was a victim.
The new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, debuted in Britain on Friday to record one-day ticket sales of US$8 million, distributor Columbia Pictures said on Saturday. The total tops Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the previous record holder with an opening day haul of US$6.5 million in 2005, and it also beat the US$4.72 million first-day total for the last Bond flick, Casino Royale (2006), Columbia said.
Fashion icon Victoria Beckham is the spokeswoman for the new Armani fashion house lingerie line following in the footsteps of husband David Beckham, who also appeared in the fashion house’s underwear campaign.
The company said Friday that Beckham will debut in the spring-summer 2009 advertising campaign of Emporio Armani women’s underwear.
Giorgio Armani called the former “Posh Spice’’ of the Spice Girls a “style icon, a dynamic lady whose influence and recognition will add great excitement’’ to the ad campaign.
Joaquin Phoenix is quitting movies to focus on music.
“He has said that Two Lovers is his last. But this is not strange. Joaquin has been directing music videos and been involved in music for the last number of years,’’ Susan Patricola, Phoenix’s publicist, said Friday.
Phoenix first talked about his decision to Extra last week while attending a fundraiser in San Francisco, abruptly ending the interview after the reporter wondered whether he was joking.
Patrick Swayze, filming again less than a year after being given a grim diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, described chemotherapy as “hell on wheels” but said work had kept him feeling positive. Swayze, 56, best known for his dance instructor role in the movie Dirty Dancing, underwent months of chemotherapy and an experimental drug treatment to beat one of the most virulent forms of cancer, which experts say has only a 5 percent five-year survival rate.
British actress Sienna Miller’s life has been made intolerable because of a “campaign of harassment” by photographers, her lawyer told London’s High Court on Thursday. Miller, 26, star of movies such as Alfie and Layer Cake, is taking legal action against photographic agency Big Pictures Ltd and its founder, Darryn Lyons, claiming they are guilty of harassment.
Germany’s first television station for gay men will go on air this week offering entertainment and news with homosexual themes via satellite and cable, the new TIMM channel said Friday.
The line-up will include popular series such as Queer as Folk, The L-Word and Absolutely Fabulous dubbed into German as well as documentaries on gay stars or celebrities who are big in the gay community such as Rupert Everett, Susan Sarandon and Liza Minnelli, the station said in a statement.
With the slogan “We love men,” TIMM said it was aimed at the estimated 3.6 million gay men who live in Germany, and also hoped to draw their family and friends, lesbians and a few “metrosexuals.”
“TIMM enriches the existing television landscape with programming from and by the target group — simply for everyone who loves men,” it said.
“The highly positive feedback from the target group in the last 12 months has shown us how high the demand is for tailored information, entertainment and service.”
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
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