EVERY now and then, a story has “cut-through”.
My phone will ping relentlessly as friends, family, celebs, industry types and, once, a minor royal, all demand the lowdown on a scoop.
Jermaine Jenas’s unceremonious sacking by the BBC is one such story. (Phillip Schofield’s “I’m not a groomer”/frantic vaping interview; Matt “hands, face, space” Hancock; Huw Edwards being a paedophile; and, bizarrely, Molly-Mae Hague’s dumping of Tommy Fury, are others.)
Perhaps it’s because Match Of The Day, one of the shows he will now no longer appear on, is a national institution.
And The One Show, a fluffy magazine-style entertainment programme, covers bases for those who hate football.
Whatever your televisual interest, it was hard to get away from Jermaine Jenas.
Today, you’ll be lucky to find him anywhere. Because in very W1A fashion, Auntie has gone into an absolute tailspin.
First, a huge mural in Manchester’s Media City, featuring Jermaine alongside other BBC Sport stars including Gary Lineker and Alex Scott, was hastily removed.
And today, he’s finally gone from the official One Show homepage, no longer beaming alongside Alex Jones and Roman Kemp. Instead, replaced by a generic programme logo.
(Presumably, some runner somewhere is feverishly looking to replace said logo with a more lively photo showing Alex Jones with someone, ANYONE, else).
Now the Corporation is said to be hastily going through the archives, randomly removing bits and pieces of Jermaine.
Probably not the bits his poor wife wants removed RN, but still.
This seems an extreme, knee-jerk and unnecessary airbrushing from history of a man who sent some dodgy sexts.
As Jermaine himself said on Friday, he didn’t break any laws. I conducted the interview, and he was clearly still shell-shocked.
Rattled, teary and a bit shaky. The Sun did not pay him.
And he could have hidden behind a bland statement on his socials, or done a contrite piece to camera on Instagram.
One where he wouldn’t have been asked, on the record, if he had broken the law by “sending any d**k pics”.
He didn’t, he insisted, calmly answering a mildly mortifying question.
He is refusing to hide from his mistakes. But the BBC is hiding him.
By deleting the former England player from its history books, they are effectively putting him in the same moralistic camp as two other erased men — Jimmy Savile and Huw Edwards.
Two actual paedophiles whom they long feted, promoted and over-paid. Indeed, Edwards was given a wage rise and kept on the payroll months after his arrest over indecent images of children.
In fact, the newsreader’s announcement of the death of Queen Elizabeth II remains available for all to see, deemed, as it is, a matter of historical and cultural significance.
While Jermaine’s insightful analysis of Bournemouth’s leaky back four is unlikely to be one for posterity, neither is it likely to offend or corrupt.
Unless, perhaps, you’re one quarter of Bournemouth FC’s leaky back four. As one commentator observed, the BBC is suffering from a severe case of Edwards PTSD — and clearly Jermaine is the fall guy.
To be clear, what he did was wrong. Not only morally, but professionally. Only a fool, or serial philanderer, would disagree.
But until recently, time and time again BBC stars have been getting away with such bad behaviour with a mere slap on the wrist. Not a P45.
What the BBC is doing now, expunging Jermaine from history, smacks of something Kim Jong Un and his state cronies would do. Not the so-called liberal Left.
It is also creating a terrifying precedent.
And there must be a plethora of well-known people out there living in fear that their every misdemeanour will come back to haunt them.
One inappropriate WhatsApp screenshot and posted online, one drunken, flirty comment said to a colleague shared.
But in the wake of the Huw Edwards and Strictly Come Dancing scandals — with a seemingly never-ending misconduct probe continuing into the latter — the BBC simply cannot afford another mis-step.
In the case of Jermaine, they were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.
They played safe, and perhaps more will emerge that will entirely validate their decision.
Whatever the truth of his firing, the way it was handled has been mildly chaotic.
An internal memo confirming his departure was sent out after The Sun broke the story,
And now the star’s lawyers have sent legal letters to the Beeb, threatening to sue.
Whatever the case, this is cancel culture. And these are worrying times for the entertainment industry at large.
