Media Watch

Sunday Herald, The, Jun 16, 2002

GEORGE Kerevan, the Hootsmon's politician turned polemicist, worked himself up into a lather over lap-dancing this week - and not for the first time.

Glasgow City Council was "priggish" and "dangerously misguided" in opposing such topless and bottomless delights, he opined.

Curiously, the former Marxist firebrand turned entrepreneurial guru forgot to register a personal interest in the erotic arts. A great pity, as a charming tabloid tale from 1996 called "The Councillor and the Stripper" would surely have helped illuminate his argument.

In it, one George Kerevan (Lab, Portobello) admitted giving hundreds of pounds to a girl he first saw performing in an Edinburgh go-go bar. No sex, mind, he just lavished her with champagne, and took her out for tea and crumpets.

"He was a sweetie," cooed Sophie Buchanan-Watt, 25. "I never remember him saying he was married." Kerevan is reported to have said: "I'm too old to blush and I stand by everything I said."

Media Watch is aware of all the criticism being directed at ITV for its lack of creative and entertaining programming, so we were glad to hear that the network was planning to broadcast the life story of former Rangers footballer Paul Gascoigne. A "candid, entertaining and fascinating" look at Gazza's life, said the ITV blurb. And after recovering from the shock of reading that it was a seven-part series, we were relieved to discover - for the sake of the network's reputation - that each episode is only 10 minutes long.

A wee funny: A newly recruited Daily Record reporter, who is to start work in the Glasgow office, goes into a watch shop in Sauchiehall Street and asks the shop assistant for a Potato Clock.

"Sorry, we have Rolex, Cartier, Timex and Swatch, but we don't have a potato clock. Why do you want one?"

"Well, Peter Cox, the Daily Record's editor, has just offered me a job and told me I had to start at 9am. Then I told him I lived in Castlemilk he said: 'Well, you'll just have to get a potato clock'."

Lovely, bubbly OK! editor Ruth Addicott, dressed in a simple white silk blouse and smart grey trousers, showed that she has a firm grasp of an editor's role within the sleazy empire of Dirty Desmond.

"He [Richard Desmond] is very respectful of the fact that I am the editor but he is the proprietor and if he doesn't think something is right then he will tell me," said the former pupil of Cheltenham Ladies College in her delightful Irish lilt. There's nothing quite like editorial independence is there Ruth?

Trust an anthropologist to take all the fun out of reviewing rotten television. Desmond 'You'll never make a monkey out of me' Morris decided to use his scientific brain to analyse the situation of Channel 4's latest bunch of Big Brother contestants.

"Many reviewers have been savage in their condemnation of the series," wrote Desmond in the London Evening Standard.

"Sadly, for the inmates, this means that, when they eventually emerge, they will be able to read what has been written about them - that they are 'imbeciles', 'borderline psychotics' or 'pathetic morons'."

This waxed Morris was not indeed a "modern zoo" rather a "medieval menagerie". Media Watch was impressed by Morris's intellectual assessment, but remains firm in its considered opinion. Cretins, the lot of them.

Irony redefined: Kelvin "Gotcha" MacKenzie talking about his bid to take on the radio industry's "fat cats" and his description of the Commercial Radio Companies Association as an organisation which does "nothing for the little guy". They are now considering taking legal against him. Strange to think that the radio rating system he is raging against has the acronym of RAJAR. Surely, a fitting Irvine Welsh-esque epithet for The Sun's bruising former editor and now head of the Wireless Group, and TalkSport.