A main plank of the BBC lawyers
hello,
I have a friend who dives into a spreadsheet when they’re stressed or overwhelmed. When they need a few minutes of controlled space in their own head. They normally emerge from the spreadsheet with clarity, a new understanding of the problem and a way forward. It’s a great thing to see.
I was reminded of this by Alex’s analysis of where best to donate your bail-out funds. Thoughtful. Powerful. A small way forward.
Another is this initiative to mentor black businesses. A lot of people who read this newsletter have signed up. More is better.
Walking round town during lock-down I’ve been seeing loads of fly-posters for Benergy by BenjiFlow. I think they went up just prior to lock-down and have stayed up. It’s such a lovely coinage. Ben-ergy. B-energy. I rolled it round my head a lot. But I’ve only just properly listened to it and it’s fantastic. All kinds of musics, melodies, ideas, benergy.
I enjoyed this judicial reckoning with TV men in The Observer’s interview with Samira Ahmed. (She sued the BBC because she and Jeremy Vine did the same job, presenting the same kind of programme, and he got paid vastly more than her.)
“A main plank of the BBC lawyers’ expensive case against her was that the enormous discrepancy was explained by Vine having “a glint in the eye” and being “cheeky”. The judge in the case was not convinced. “Jeremy Vine read the script from the autocue,” the judgment noted. “If it told him to roll his eyes he did. It did not require any particular skill or experience to do that.”
I was listening to a podcast the other day. The interviewee said that Richard Ayoade had described the job of a film director as being ‘the custodian of tone’. I like that. Lots of jobs have an element of that. It’s very often what gets you engaged in a piece of creative work but it doesn’t get written and theorised about like plot and story do.
In a week of powerful words Clara Amfo’s speech on Radio 1 really stood out and sunk in.
(There are 580 of you. 2 down on last month. The decline into irrelevance is picking up speed. 580 is palindromic in bases 12 (404/12) and 17 (202/17). Fun if you’re into Roland samplers.)