Them and Us

The Guardian, TV & Radio blog:

...there can hardly be anything else to add [to the Ross/Brand 'affair] right now regarding what my colleague Charlie Brooker described as the "gitstorm" - other than to remember how very close to real trouble Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear team came over Richard Hammond's near-fatal crash in September 2006. Clarkson, however, had columns on News International papers. He was on their team, which effectively caused that newspaper group, and all the others, to think twice and thrice before putting their steel-toecapped boot in to his kidneys. Perhaps if Jonathan Ross had kept his film review column on the News of the World, the Sun would have wondered about buying up the Max Clifford-ghosted outrage of Georgina Baillie. Perhaps this connection with News International would have caused Fleet Street's indignation to falter short of the tipping point.