Who the hell is Anton du Beke? I woke up midweek and there were all these news headlines demanding that he should be sacked. I immediately assumed he was the French politician who stuck up for Roman Polanski on that under-age rape charge and was subsequently found to have cheerfully immersed himself in Thai boys while on holiday in the Far East, as you do. Yeah sack the perv, I thought, and drifted back to an untroubled sleep.
However, it wasn’t him, it transpired. The whole furore is about some dancing chav from near Orpington who performs on a television programme for idiots, something called Strictly Come Dancing, whereby people who were once semi-celebrities compete through the medium of dance to win nothing. This Du Beke had said his dancing partner “looked like a Paki”. (…)
Bruce Forsyth said he thought it was okay to call people “Paki” — no worse than someone calling a Brit a limey. Immediately he was slapped down by a BBC transfixed with panic, strung out between its craven, whitey political correctness and a wish to preserve the stars of its most popular programme — and Brucie apologised, too.
