No calls about stones and glasshouses, please, to Angus Deayton, dropped as presenter of Have I Got News for You this week, writes Hugh Linehan
The announcement this week that Angus Deayton, the quizzically sardonic presenter of the BBC satirical quiz show, Have I Got News For You, had been dropped following further tabloid revelations about his colourful private life, has prompted hand-wringing in the British media about the difference between "public interest" (good) and "the public's interest" (bad). On the face of it, the point is irrefutable: what people do in their private lives is their own business, unless they are shown to have broken the law. Unless he is actually convicted of a crime, why should Deayton's predilection for prostitutes and cocaine have any effect on his ability to do his job? And, more to the point, what business is it of ours anyway?
Which would all be fine and well, were it not for the fact that, for the last 12 years, Deayton and his co-stars have mercilessly taken apart the peccadillos of the rich and powerful. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword, various disgraced Tory MPs must be thinking happily this weekend.
Announcing that Deayton was being dropped, the BBC carefully avoided any suggestion of moral judgment. "It is felt by all concerned that continuing stories about Angus's private life have made him the subject of headlines rather than a commentator on them. This has made his position as host of the topical news quiz untenable," it stated.
In other words, it's just business, Angus. It has been suggested that Deayton's co-stars, comedian Paul Merton and Private Eye editor Ian Hislop, were becoming exasperated with the way the continuing revelations were overshadowing the rest of the show. Ratings for HIGNFY might have jumped by 1.5 million when Hislop and Merton ragged Deayton mercilessly about the first newspaper stories back in August, but that gag won't run for an entire series.
Merton took over Deayton's duties for last night's show, and political correspondents John Sergeant and Andrew Marr, along with actor Stephen Fry, have been mentioned as possible long-term replacements. But Deayton's departure may signal the death knell for the 12-year-old HIGNFY, which rose from BBC2 cultdom to become a pillar of BBC1's prime-time schedule, enormously enriching its stars along the way. It exemplified one of the best traits in British culture - its wit and healthy contempt for the rich and powerful. Despite, or perhaps because of, its class system, the UK has an admirable tradition of poking fun at those who purport to be its elders and betters - far more so than in other, supposedly more egalitarian societies. But satire is at its most effective when perpetrated by outsiders, not by multimillionaires who make more in a few days than most politicans do in a year.
Until the first revelations about his cocaine-snorting with prostitutes, Deayton was being paid £50,000 per episode. That was reduced to £25,000. In addition to his TV salary, Deayton was reported to be making more than £20,000 an hour for presiding at awards ceremonies and for after-dinner speaking. With the money came the inevitable media intrusion.
"I think if it wasn't for the fact that he was presenting this programme, on which he's paid to be smug about other celebrities' misfortunes, then he'd be OK," said Boyd Hilton, of the celebrity magazine, Heat.
"Or maybe not . . ." as Deayton himself says. The pastels-and-sofas world of daytime television looks likely to be deprived forever of the talents of John Leslie, the rather less famous (until this week) ITV presenter. The even more squalid media circus surrounding Leslie, widely suggested as being the Mr X Ulrika Jonsson has accused of rape 12 years after the alleged event, demonstrates the depths to which celebrity-based media coverage has sunk. The furore, initiated by a lucrative book deal, has now sparked other allegations against Leslie, some of which are being investigated by the police. There's something nauseating about these allegations providing most of the jokes on Graham Norton's nightly Channel 4 show this week.
Interestingly, cocaine features heavily in both sagas. "TV Deayton's drugs romp with vice girl" screamed the front page of the News of the World, the same newspaper which also published photographs last week of Leslie apparently snorting cocaine. Back in the 1980s, it used to be said that cocaine was God's way of telling you that you had too much money. Nowadays, the drug is even more widespread throughout British (and Irish) society. The hypocrisy of journalists and editors who know this only too well, yet insist on blazing shock-horror headlines every time they have evidence of some minor celebrity snorting a few lines, is breathtaking. The real point about cocaine, surely, is that it encourages and intensifies the narcissism, arrogance and greed which are the hallmarks of "celebrity culture".
Television and its creatures are transient things, these days more than ever. What was most surprising this week was to be reminded that HIGNFY has lasted 12 years.
But, as another C-list celeb, Vanessa Feltz, pointed out this week, there is life after superstardom. It's called satellite TV. Expect to see Deayton popping up on channel 182 soon. Unless, of course, there's another Celebrity Big Brother . . .