Doctor Who’s demise is an overdue lesson for woke BBC – & a warning to other companies who’ve become slaves to diversity
SO farewell Fifteenth Doctor, off to fiddle with your sonic screwdriver in some woke utopia at the end of a Gallifrey rainbow.
Doctor Who’s demise has been an overdue lesson for its smug producers.
High on their own self-importance and right-on zealotry, they managed to ruin a franchise that was beloved by millions.
As we revealed this week, audiences for Ncuti Gatwa’s truncated Time Lord found it “rubbish”, “boring” and “woke” and complained producers had put social justice issues above quality.
And who let them get away with that?
Craven BBC executives terrified of appearing homophobic, transphobic or displaying some other LBGTQ+ phobia by pointing out how utterly crap it was, I suspect.
They gave overbearing writer Russell T Davies far too much freedom and, in return, he turned the 62-year-old show into a pulpit for his own sermons on gender ideology.
We can only hope that whoever gets the gig next lives on the same planet as the rest of us.
Of course, the Doctor Who debacle is not just a lesson for the BBC.
It is a vivid case study of what happens when you become so weak and battle-worn by the “culture wars” that you roll over and let others do things in your name that just p**s people off. And it isn’t the only casualty of this crisis of confidence.
Just last month Jaguar, the British car brand once the ultimate status symbol of middle England, canned its advertising agency.
We didn’t need Jag fan Inspector Morse to work out why.
Jaguar had allowed a pretentious advertising firm to reinvent the company with a Technicolor “inclusive” ad campaign that would make Benetton cringe.
The resulting backlash was an avalanche of derision.
When it aired, I gave the ailing company the benefit of the doubt on these pages for at least having the balls to try something different.
But I assumed — naively it seems — that a brand whose parent company recorded £29billion in revenue last year would have done its homework and formulated its new direction after listening to prospective clients.
Apparently not.
So the big cat of motoring became yet another dog humiliatingly wagged by its own tail.
That disaster would follow this collective decision to let people, many who are essentially activists, determine how an organisation should behave was all too predictable.
When the first drumbeats of wokeism started emanating from the US, social justice campaigners over here tuned in with great excitement.
The Great Overcorrection began.
Fingers were pointed, social media pile-ons were unleashed and all our political, educational, cultural and corporate institutions panicked.
“Is my leaflet about breastfeeding transphobic? Are my lessons racist? Is saying ‘ladies and gentleman’ a microaggression? Does my washing powder have white privilege? Oh God, what shall we do? HELP!!!”
That help came quickly in the form of right-on diversity “consultants” — cynical agents, who for a large fee, could ensure that you avoided what they deemed “problematic” practices.
Ideological madness
Value systems were franchised out to strangers with agendas.
Like the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall, which charges £3,000 for companies to become “diversity champions” and be advised (read “bollocked”) about gender issues by blue-haired busybodies.
Everyone from the Bank of England to the House of Lords signed up to this hustle until they realised they were being conned.
At one point £1.2million was given to Stonewall by public bodies.
HR bosses lapped this stuff up, relishing a new level of importance, a world where they didn’t just sign off maternity leave or work out how to sack people for shagging on the photocopier.
Diversity, Equality and Inclusion departments mushroomed, not least in the civil service where, we learnt this week, £27million of taxpayers’ cash has been spent on DEI officers.
Thankfully, the worm appears to be turning.
Just as Reform UK is purging its council DEI departments, smart private sector operators are starting to realise themselves that much of what they have been taught to be worried about is nonsense.
They already know it is simply good business to be inclusive and respectful of their customers, employees, students or patients.
But they also know there is a line — where common sense ends and ideological madness begins.
So Stonewall is out (even the BBC has ditched it) and the fight back is on.
People are finally, to coin a phrase, waking up.
The Doctor is not the only one regenerating.
THANK GOD IT'S FRYDAY
HAPPY National Fish and Chip day, folks.
There are few things more exciting in life than a chippy tea, right?
Will it be a jumbo cod or haddock? Maybe they’ve got skate tonight.
And what about a chaser of a crunchy saveloy or pickled egg?
Decision, decisions.
Whatever I choose, it will always be accompanied by a bag of chips so enormous Desperate Dan would struggle to finish the lot.
And if 50 per cent of them aren’t stuck to the paper I’m taking them back.
I’m lucky I have a good chippy nearby.
Many are dying out, forced to close thanks to energy costs soaring and Rachel Reeves’ hike of employers’ National Insurance.
So if you haven’t been to your local for a while, get yourself down there today . . . before they have had their chips.
It’s a jaw-dropping look, Si
THAT squeaky-voiced youth who won Britain’s Got Talent had some very clever tricks.
But nothing as mesmerising as how Simon Cowell looked in a promo for the show.
Simon, 65, hasn’t looked like himself for a good few years but in an Instagram reel his hollow eyes and gigantic lantern jaw made him look utterly insane.
And the teeth! They looked whiter than Liam Gallagher’s mirror in 1996.
What’s going on?
I like Simon and used to speak to him pretty much every day when The X Factor was huge.
He’s a pretty down-to-earth bloke and part of his charm was that he was just a normal-looking geezer (albeit one in weirdly high-waisted jeans) who had no time for showbiz tweakments.
Now he looks like he’s auditioning for Love Island.
It’s a no from me.
WHAT A RIGHTS TO DO
REMEMBER when the luvvies were in a tizzy over London’s snooty Garrick Club refusing to allow women to be members?
Folk like Stephen Fry and Sting demanded ladies be let in, despite having been members of this 200-year-old anti-oestrogen institution for many years.
Well, the ban was lifted last year, the floodgates opened and a whopping, er, three women have joined – acting dames Judi Dench, Sian Phillips and Celia Imrie.
What a result! Treble G&Ts all round.
You can hardly blame women for giving it a swerve.
Paying two grand a year for the privilege of sitting near the host of ITV’s Jeopardy as he eats a coddled gull’s egg in an oak-panelled library doesn’t seem that much of a draw.
ER, SO WHAT TAYLOR?
NOW I confess I’m quite the fan of Taylor Swift’s music – she has a good ear for a melody does our Tay-Tay.
But please tell me why I should care that she’s bought back her master recordings.
The breathlessly announced purchase was treated as if she’d discovered the Holy Grail hanging up behind the bog door in her tour trailer.
Unless I’m missing something, it was simply the culmination of her amassing so much cash that she was able to pay around £220million for the rights to her first six albums.
And as she admitted herself, a lot of that loot came from fans paying eye-watering sums for tickets to her Eras tour last year.
So will that make parents feel better about shelling out the price of a small car to take the kids to see their favourite pop star?
No? Thought not.
Life's too... short
MUCH consternation about Tinder allowing women to weed out shorter men.
Speaking as a man who lives within 5ft 8in of the ground, I would presumably be one of those poor souls filtered out, should I find myself suddenly back on the dating scene.
But I can confirm that I would have no problem with being screened by some fussy female hunting for a Richard Osman rather than a Richard Hammond.
Filter away!
I’m busy and life’s too, er, short.