'The BBC bottled sacking Strictly star Wynne Evans - it was the same with Brendan O'Carroll'
'The BBC bottled sacking Strictly star Wynne Evans - it was the same with Brendan O'Carroll'
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When director-general Tim Davie announced plans for a BBC-wide workplace culture review, he loftily decreed that from now on, none of its big name stars were “indispensable”. In fact, he even said he’d banned the use of the word “talent” to describe the Corporation’s crop of famous faces. But three months on, the so-called Talent are having the last laugh.
If any normal person in any normal job had ‘joked’ about three-way sex in such disgusting terms the same way as Wynne Evans did, chances are they would have been shown the door. Don’t forget this is a man who is clearly comfortable with sex-orientated remarks in the workplace. Just last October, a ‘joke’ he made in the Strictly make-up room about his chin looking like a vagina was leaked to this paper.
On both occasions, the BBC and his team sought to downplay the row by insisting there were no complaints. True, but in this current climate when TV jobs are being slashed left, right and centre would anyone want to stick their head about the parapet and speak out. Instead, Evans gets a slap on the wrist, is allowed back on tour, and his new BBC1 primetime show airs as if nothing happened.
It’s not just the Go-Compare singer who is let off the hook. BBC star Brendan O’Carroll survived the sack despite a black member of staff quitting in disgust over an N-word ‘joke’ during a Mrs Brown’s Boys script read-through. Like Evans, they issued him with a warning and told him not to do it again. Like Evans, there was also a face-saving apology.
