Mark Andrews: Costa courts controversy, the TV turn-off, and the BBC apologises at last
Coffee giant Costa has stumbled into the culture war by deciding the best way to promote its brand of homogeneous corporate coffee bars was through a cartoon of a 'trans-person' showing off the scars left behind after having had their breasts removed. Very tasteful.
Wouldn't you love to have been a fly on the wall when that decision was made?
I imagine it would have gone along the lines of a particularly excruciating episode of The Apprentice, where some overbearing project manager cocks a deaf 'un to wiser counsel, and insists there is no such thing as bad publicity. And anybody who has a problem with that is not the type of customer they want.
Having lost the task, said project manager would then try to save his skin – and it would be bound to be a bloke – with some long-winded explanation about how inclusivity and diversity are crucial to creating a core brand.
To which Lord Sugar, his face puce with rage, interjects: "What the @*!* has that got to do with bladdy coffee?"
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Presumably Costa thought that the resulting controversy would make it a magnet for trendy, well-heeled, urban hipsters. But I very much doubt it. I would imagine that a faceless multi-billion pound, multinational corporation like Costa is the last place such people would want to be seen.
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It appears I am now be part of a growing demographic known as the 'TV rejectors', people who watch less than two hours of television a week.
Young people in particular are turning their backs on scheduled TV programmes, preferring to watch social media clips and online streaming services.
It's nice to be in the vanguard of the latest trend, but the reason I've stopped watching has nothing to do with streaming or social media. It's because there's nothing on. Apart from The Apprentice.
I used to watch News at 10, but I rarely bother now it has been dumbed down on both channels, particularly when Tom Bradby feels necessary to treat us to one of his pithy sneers.
Occasionally there are programmes on which I might have enjoyed. But I always seem to miss them because I no longer read the listings.
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In May this year, the newscaster Sally Nugent, incorrectly and somewhat offensively, described the Dam Busters raid during the Second World War as 'infamous'. This week the BBC apologised, following an investigation by its 'executive complaints unit'.
Doesn't that sum it up? Any normal business would realise it had dropped a clanger, apologised the next day, and everybody would have moved on.
Instead the Beeb appoints a committee of bureaucrats to hold a three-month investigation.
Just as well today's BBC management wasn't in charge of the war effort.
