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Moyles and homophobia – 2
BBC Radio 1 controller Andy Parfitt has ‘warned’ breakfast DJ Chris Moyles about ‘homophobia’ and ‘bullying’ on his breakfast show.
The BBC reports Parfitt as saying ‘I made it absolutely perfectly clear to him and everyone at Radio 1 that we don’t condone bullying or homophobia or anything else like that.
‘As long as people work within the rules, then their future’s secure.’
The second part is actually the more interesting. Moyles, like Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross before him, and Kenny Everett before them, is employed exactly because of who he is and what he says. By definition, Moyles is supposed to be at very least sailing close to the wind.
Similarly, John Gaunt was employed because he’s the type of person that would call someone a ‘health Nazi’. Yet his employers at LBC Talksport feigned shock when he did just that, and sacked him.
The problem (for bosses) with ‘edgy’ is that there always has to be a risk of going too far. If one robs Moyles, or Ross, of the ‘what will he say next’ frisson, nothing is left. When Parfitt suggests that everyone works within the rules, he is making obselete the very reason for employing Moyles in the first place.