AUDIO: Live in conversation with Deborah Ffrench

Back in December I appeared on Blog Talk Radio to take part in a three hour broadcast, during which I was interviewed by the host, Rev Catherine Gross, then took calls from members of the public.

Earlier this week I began uploading edited highlights of my appearance on the show to my YouTube channel. Today I have added four clips from the segment during which listeners were invited to call in and ask me questions.

One of those listeners was Deborah Ffrench, a writer well known in the Michael Jackson community for her magnificant article 'Michael Jackson: The Making of a Myth', which explored the 1993 allegations against Jackson in great detail and highlighted the bias and sensationalism which dominated the media's coverage of the scandal.

Deborah is also well known in the fan community because for some time, Jackson's detractors have insisted that she and I are in fact the same person - even conducting syntax comparisons on our writing styles in order to 'prove' that we are one and the same.

So it is with great pleasure that I present the following four clips of Deborah and I in conversation, on live radio, on Friday 3rd December 2010. I keenly await the conspiracy theorists' explanations, which I'm sure will be every inch as humorous and imaginative as their previous efforts.

Click here to listen to Part One.

Click here to listen to Part Two.

Click here to listen to Part Three.

Click here to listen to Part Four.

OFCOM ignored 115 complaints; ITV ignores hundreds more

Data released today shows that OFCOM ignored a total of 115 complaints about Tuesday 9th November's episode of 'This Morning'.

Figures show that the episode was last week's third most complained about television programme, beaten only by two episodes of controversial talent show 'X Factor'.



On Thursday 11th November, just two days after 'This Morning' aired a series of nasty comments by Kelvin MacKenzie about Michael Jackson and his children, OFCOM announced that it had already obtained the footage and conducted an investigation into the incident. The body refused to uphold complaints about the show on the fictitious premise that the segment had not breached the OFCOM code.

Bizarrely, ITV seemed to reach the opposite conclusion. On the same day that OFCOM claimed there had been nothing wrong with the segment, ITV removed the clip from its online catch-up service.

Not content with contradicting OFCOM, ITV have spent much of the last few days contradicting themselves. Despite believing that MacKenzie's comments were offensive enough to warrant removing them from the catch-up service, ITV is now bombarding Jackson's fans with generic and inaccurate emails denying that there was anything wrong with the segment.

The email, apparently written by ITV's head of legal compliance Mark Sunderland, completely re-writes the events of Tuesday 9th November and is successfully rebutted, point by point, in this eloquent and frequently hilarious response by Deborah Ffrench.

In the email Sunderland dismisses those offended by MacKenzie's comments as 'fans', but makes no mention of Jackson's friends and family. This is despite Jackson's nephew Taj publicly voicing his dismay over the comments and US Ambassador Paul W Jones, a personal friend of Michael Jackson, sending a letter of complaint to the broadcaster.

Sunderland also wrongly claims that 'This Morning' host Phillip Schofield made clear that MacKenzie's comments did not represent the views of ITV. The footage tells a different story but, of course, ITV destroyed that evidence on Thursday.

The Interviewer becomes the Interviewee - Part Four

The latest instalment of my interview with author Lorette Luzajic has been uploaded.

In this segment, I discuss the demonisation of biographer Randy Taraborrelli, the methods of conspiracy theorists and the absurd claims that Deborah Ffrench and I are the same person.

Using examples, I reveal how conspiracy bloggers take small and inconsequential facts, then use them to 'prove' irrelevant, globe-spanning conspiracies. I also expose the enormous lie that conspiracy bloggers have been spreading about me for months, even though it can be completely disproven with one brief visit to my website.

Click here to read Part Four of my exclusive interview with Lorette Luzajic.