Much ado about nothing (possibly)
The recent furore attending upon Sunderland football manager David Moyes’ inappropriate end-of-interview remark to female BBC sports reporter Vicki Sparks has not only highlighted several issues but launched a thousand newspaper columns and caused innumerable rent-a-mouths to bestride the airwaves, but (for what’s it’s worth) in my view is also a nailed-on storm in a tea-cup.
It may come as a huge surprise, even an outrage, to the champagne socialist intelligentsia and ‘luvvies’ who inhabit the more salubrious backwaters of Hampstead Hill, but the supposedly extraordinary revelation that the world of top flight male football – indeed I suspect that of any elite sport as played by either males or females – remains a hotbed of old-fashioned sexist attitudes and banter is neither news nor particularly shocking to anybody who lives in the real world.
Please don’t misunderstand me – I’m not pronouncing as to whether that fact is a good or a bad thing.
It’s just that, whatever our modern PC-dominated world tries to impose upon us, right around the globe most men are in charge of household budgets and don’t do their fair share of housework and – this the other side of the coin – most women do the majority of home and family-looking-after. Workplace banter can be crude, obscene, inappropriate – and also sometimes very inventive and funny.
It’s all part of the team-bonding and camaraderie – that is, until the Big Brother ‘Thought Police’ come thumping on the front door, demanding to be let in and examine everyone’s identity papers and inner thoughts, expressed or otherwise.
The fact is that we all think and speak differently in private to how we do in public – and okay, those who speak ‘on the record’ or in situations where the media are present have to be on their guard, or more careful, than most in this respect.
As I type, examples such as John Major describing some of his Tory cabinet as ‘bastards’, Gordon Brown referring to a female member of the public as ‘bigoted’ after jumping into the sanctuary of his car when on the stump and Ken Clark joshing with Malcolm Rifkind in a Sky studio either before or after an interview about Theresa May being ‘a bloody difficult woman’ spring readily to mind.
On a personal level, I have one family member whose behaviour has been scandalous and contrary to every standard of integrity we were brought up to respect and yet whom – in family gatherings and for the sake of unity – I always treat with servility and apparent closeness, however insincere.
Another – known in our branch of the family as ‘The Rock’ – has a much-joked about reputation for being an international class bore and yet, whenever we see him, we pay him careful respect. Hopefully he will never find out what we really think of him.
I’ve worked in the media and know how it works.
There is an unofficial code of collaboration – a shorthand language and understanding of ‘how things work’ to which the public are rarely privy – designed to ensure that the demands of television and broadcasting are met whilst allowing both sides (the interviewees and the interviewers) to talk around the issues and how they are dealt with. One aspect is attribution, a mutual understanding and respect as to what is said (or going to be) ‘on the record’ and what is not.
Sometimes a political reporter will have a private ‘off the record’ conversation with a politician or minister on the basis that his or her name will not be attached to the information conveyed within it. The reporter may then refer to that information in a report but describe it as having come from ‘a senior source’ rather than from the politician in question. Such pacts make the world of journalism go around.
And of course, sometimes such arrangements go wrong or get misinterpreted by one or both sides – and thus the trust between them breaks down. A reporter may cock up and mention a political source’s name, or – having erroneously leaked some tit-bit of policy – a politician may lie and deny that he said something which he definitely did.
It’s just life, folks.
I have watched and listened to Moye’s exchange with Vicki Sparks several times. My impression of it has remained constant. He thought the interview was over, the tapes had stopped running, the broadcast had finished. He thought he was speaking to her (and anyone else in the room) under standard industry ‘journalism rules’, i.e. ‘simply between ourselves’. He said what he said. To him it was just banter. Or at the time he thought it was.
None of us would like to have our every private conversation and statement broadcast to the world, whether we be male or female.
Back in my days in television, when things and attitudes were (shall we say) a little more basic and racy that the PC-brigade would allow today, what would now be classed as sexism was then the norm – and that went for both sexes. And both sexes just got on and dealt with it.
On one occasion a veteran female production assistant complained to me, her ultimate boss, about being tied to a chair in her office and treated inappropriately by two producers. In something close to panic (fearing a scandal in an era – the early 1990s – when our Personnel department was flexing its ‘equality’ muscles) I delegated a similarly-aged female production assistant supervisor to interview said victim and assess the situation. A fortnight later, having heard nothing, I rang her and asked how it went.
“All done and dusted.”
“Thank God! How did you manage that?”
“Easy. I pointed out to Christine that the only time a PA in this industry has to worry about unwanted sexual attention is when it stops …”
Another time I was playing in a company cricket match to which many colleagues came, it being a day out and a chance to relax in the sunshine.
At tea-time I was sitting with a bunch of programme-makers, including a married lady who now – nearly twenty years later – is executive producer of two highly-regarded afternoon television series on the BBC and ITV.
As a couple of opposition players sauntered past where we were sitting – one of them a good-looking chap – said female made what I can only refer to as a Sid James-style growl of sexual anticipation and said sotto voce to our group “Whoar .. have him scrubbed and sent to my tent …”
I smile when I think of the near certainty that if she’d said that in 2017, either in an interview or when she thought she was talking ‘off the record’ (but in fact a microphone had picked it up), by now she’d probably have been serving time in Holloway.
