This blog was inspired by a headline I saw today regarding the 2006 Doctor Who episode 'Fear Her' being pulled from iPlayer. The headline didn't give any indication why, and I clicked on it out of curiosity, struggling to recall what that episode did that might have offended someone. Then when I read a little more about it, I thought, 'Ah, Huw Edwards. Of course.'
As most people in the UK will have heard by now, the former news presenter Huw Edwards has pleaded guilty to possessing indecent images of children. Edwards had been an extremely familiar face on news and current affairs programmes, and appeared in the offending Doctor Who episode as a presenter on the 2012 Olympics, which at the time of broadcast were six years in the future. I daresay the episode will be back at some point with his presence in the episode having been digitally removed - but according to news sources, it's presented the BBC with the awkward situation of what to do with the hundreds of hours of footage of Huw Edwards they possess in archives, and whether they should ever re-broadcast them.
The situation reminded me of something that happened a few years ago, when a close friend of mine confided to me that they'd been sexually assaulted by a regular contributor to a well-known BBC panel show. I was naturally shocked to hear of this person's behaviour, as prior to this conversation I'd enjoyed that programme and appreciated this celebrity's contribution to it. In the aftermath of their encounter, my friend contacted both the police and the media. In the case of the police report, the allegation didn't go anywhere as there wasn't sufficient evidence to charge the celebrity. However, shortly afterwards the allegation of this person being a sexual predator was widely reported in the UK press.
The BBC's response to these allegations was one of the most peculiar things I've ever seen. The person was removed from the television programme they were a regular on. However, the BBC insisted that this person's removal had nothing at all to do with the allegations against them of sexual misconduct and that they were just refreshing the show's line-up. I do not believe this claim was true, for a few reasons. The first is that none of the other regular people on the programme lost their jobs. The second is that the offending person's episodes were completely pulled from repeat broadcasts afterwards, which had never happened with anyone who had left the show previously. It is evident to me that the BBC's reaction was motivated primarily by embarrassment and wanting to distance itself from the allegations. And I think this was the worst decision it could possibly have made. Ideally I'd have liked them to be decisive about the person's removal from the show in order to make a statement that this kind of behaviour will not be tolerated, but I can appreciate that the person in question was never actually charged with a crime, so if they'd decided to keep the person on and remind everyone that we are all innocent until proven guilty I think there's something to be said for that as well (obviously I know the person is guilty because I'm friends with the victim, but I can appreciate that that's beside the point). But finding an excuse to take the person off air and pretending it had nothing to do with what had happened didn't make any kind of statement. It didn't protect either the accused person or the accuser. All it protected was the BBC's reputation. And this is unfortunately indicative of the BBC's attitude to allegations of serious misconduct.
I believe, and have done for quite a while, that the culture of celebrity is utterly toxic. I was in conversation about this recently with a friend of mine who said that they felt that it was problematic how much people glorify celebrities in our culture. I said, 'People who glorify celebrities generally don't actually know any celebrities.' And it's true. Working in entertainment, I have occasionally crossed paths with well-known people, some of whom I've liked, some of whom I've strongly disliked, but all of whom have reaffirmed to me how damaging the whole nature of celebrity is. Celebrities are often incredibly toxic people - but even if they aren't toxic, even if they're lovely and I've got on really well with them, I've been able to see that being in this world and absorbing the kind of attitudes within it has actually made them quite vulnerable. It's fairly common on the left to strongly dislike the Royal Family and the fact that they fundamentally represent an unequal society - but I feel the left hasn't quite caught up yet with the fact that this is also true of famous people in general. The existence of celebrities perpetuates a privilege divide within society that is consented to by the public in a way that other privilege divides are not. With any other social inequality (racism, sexism, homophobia and so on) those who are oppressed have means of standing up to their oppressors and demanding their rights - but for some reason, when it's celebrities, we very rarely do.
I think I know the reason why celebrities get a free pass here. It's because the nature of celebrity is something you aren't born with. It is, at least in theory, possible for any of us to become a celebrity (this is ignoring the very high numbers of celebrities who are from upper-class backgrounds, but it's also the truth that some people slip through the net). When you've got a monarchy, you know that it's something you're either born into or you're not, so it's relatively easy to persuade people to stand against such an unequal system. But when it's a celebrity, particularly someone who's famous for their work entertaining us, they represent something that we all aspire towards. They're perceived as people who worked hard and were really talented, and quite rightly earned respect for what they did. They represent the meritocratic values that we've been brought up to believe in. They represent the idea that if we also work really hard, we could become as respected as them. To be clear, I'm not saying that these people haven't worked hard. I'm sure many of them have. But there will always be plenty of other people who have worked just as hard and are just as talented (if not more so) who do not receive this level of recognition. The celebrities exist to perpetuate this idea that 'if you work really hard, you just might make it!' in order to make people who are struggling feel that it must be because they aren't working hard enough, rather than because there are flaws in the system.
As damaging as this is for regular people, I think it is also deeply damaging for the celebrities themselves. I believe it is profoundly unhealthy to exist in a culture where people are constantly being sycophantic towards you, or believing that they know you when they don't. I've recognised this in people I've met from time to time, but mostly I've seen it in how these people behave if you observe their lives from afar. Particularly because celebrity relationships and marriages are often very brief. It's become quite a regular joke how rare it is when you see a celebrity couple that's been together more than a certain amount of time. There's a reason for this, and the reason is that if you live that kind of life it is hard to form meaningful relationships with other people. It's probably hard even to feel confident in your own identity, because it's all so tied up with how you're perceived by people you don't even know. I've written before about JK Rowling's very extreme online behaviour in recent years and how much she seems to want to harm the transgender community - and to be clear I think there is absolutely no excuse for this behaviour, but I also think that these are not the actions of someone who is mentally healthy. I think the almost godlike cultural status JK Rowling had for two decades has most likely caused significant damage to her mental health and what we're seeing is a very public and humiliating breakdown. Truthfully I feel sorry for her, although not nearly as sorry as I feel for the transgender people who are suffering greatly as a result of the amount of money and resources she has behind her breakdown.
Huw Edwards is one of a very high number of celebrities in recent years who have been accused or even convicted of inappropriate behaviour towards vulnerable people. Of course, there are plenty of people who behave like this who aren't celebrities as well, so you can't say with any specific individual that 'this wouldn't have happened if they weren't famous'. But it isn't a coincidence that it happens so much more often with very high-profile people working in the media or in entertainment than it seems to with people working in any other field or at any other level. It happens because it's a consequence of someone firstly being intensely powerful, secondly having a public image which isn't conducive to having good mental health, and thirdly inhabiting a culture within your work which is incredibly dog-eat-dog. Being quite emotionally isolated whilst also having the money and resources to do whatever you want and feeling like you're invincible is a cocktail for abusive behaviour, and everyone who glorifies celebrities helps to continue that trend.
And the worst part is that a culture which puts these people on pedestals will inevitably contain cover-ups. The most disturbing thing about the predatory behaviour of Jimmy Savile when it was revealed wasn't even his obscene behaviour (which was obscene, but only as much as plenty of other predators' behaviour) but the fact that everyone at the BBC knew about it and allowed it to happen. I remember an interview with a child who Savile abused in his dressing room on Jim'll Fix It who recalled that at one point the door opened as someone else started to come in, and then quickly went out again and shut the door upon realising that Savile was molesting a child. Not everyone went along with the cover-ups. When these predators are revealed, they usually have had people who did try to speak up against them, and those brave individuals normally suffered for it (you can read about this in my blog on cancel culture). But on the whole, the message is sent that if you value your career, you don't stand against someone powerful no matter what you know about them. And unfortunately, I have seen no evidence that bodies like the BBC have changed at all since the days of Jimmy Savile. My friend's attacker had been a regular panelist on that programme for many years, and I sincerely doubt that there had never been any other victims prior to my friend, or that people at the BBC didn't know about it. The same was true of Russell Brand, the same will almost certainly be true of Huw Edwards, and I'm certain that there are other people working for the BBC and other entertainment bodies who are known to be predators. And one day their names will come out, and as usual their colleagues will wring their hands and talk about how awful it all is, without doing anything to change the actual system.
Now we have the matter of how the BBC should handle the archive footage about something like this. I think it's absolutely pathetic to put so much energy into editing out Huw Edwards' tiny cameo in the Doctor Who episode 'Fear Her' when during that era of Doctor Who, there were three companions whose actors have all faced allegations of sexual misconduct. (The actors in question are Noel Clarke, John Barrowman and Bruno Langley - of the three, Langley's instance was the most severe, Barrowman's the least, but sexual misconduct is never acceptable and I think it's an absolute stain on the history of what is generally a good television programme that all these men were associated with the programme around the same time). I do of course realise that these actors' roles cannot be edited out of the episodes they contributed to without ruining the story, and I do not wish them to be. I don't think it's right for Huw Edwards' role to be cut either. I don't think references to Jimmy Savile should be removed from old television shows, or that his appearances in episodes of things like Desert Island Discs shouldn't be on the BBC website. I didn't think that the episode of The Simpsons featuring Michael Jackson should have been pulled (this was a weird one as it happened twenty years after the allegations of his inappropriate behaviour with children had come out, long after he was dead and everyone had calmed down). As in the case where the celebrity who attacked my friend was removed from a BBC panel show, these decisions have not been made to protect anyone's victims. They've been made to whitewash history - for the corporations behind these productions to hide the evidence that they enabled these people's crimes.
If you're going to recognise how wrong the behaviour of a famous person was, and commit to doing better in the future, you have to acknowledge your own role in that. I think everyone should be able to see how often these people appeared on television, how much money they made, how much power they had, how much access to victims they were allowed. Then, and only then, can we start to build a society that recognises everyone as equally worthy of respect, and equally culpable if they do something wrong.
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