In scenes which inevitably beg comparison with W1A, the long-running gag on Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Radio 5 Live film review show, referring to Apple iPhones as a “fruit-related device”, has come under the scrutiny of the BBC Trust.
A listener complained that the gag wasn’t very funny to begin with and had been used so often it should “now be laid to rest”. Moreover, they said it wasn’t the BBC’s job to promote Apple products, which they suggested the 5 Live pair were guilty of doing despite not actually saying “iPhone”.
The complaint was initially rejected by the BBC’s audience services department (the department that services audiences) before being shunted upstairs to the trust’s editorial standards committee.
Reassuringly for all concerned, the trust ruled on Thursday that whether jokes were funny or not was not part of its remit.
Decisions as to whether the “joke” of referring to “fruit-related devices” was funny or not rested solely with the BBC Executive, whose editorial judgements were not subject to scrutiny by the Trust unless they involved a breach of the editorial guidelines.
It also said that BBC presenters were allowed to refer to commercial products, whether directly or indirectly, and the complaint proceeded no further.
No-one was more relieved than Mayo, who joked about it on Twitter.
If we can't use jokes that aren't funny any more, it would a much shorter show https://t.co/BCIoisfqDP
— Simon Mayo (@simonmayo) March 31, 2016
Kermode, we hear, still can’t believe the whole thing isn’t entirely made up.
