Jonathan Agnew, the Observer and a Social Media Scrap

A view from the boundary

This is an interesting tale. I’ll just report the facts of the recent public fall out between Will Buckley of the Observer newspaper, and Jonathan Agnew, the BBC’s cricket correspondent.

Here we go.

Saturday 22 August:

Jonathan Agnew (affectionately known as Aggers) interviews Lilly Allen (the pop star) live on Test Match Special during the lunch break of the final Ashes test at the Oval. (Listen to the audio here)

Sunday 23 August:

An article is published in the Observer by Will Buckley (the Observer’s senior sports writer), describing the interview. The article is called When Aggers met Lily: an unrequited love affair for the middle-aged, and it included the following paragraphs:

“And, finally, it arrived but when it did so, and as is so often the case, Agnew/Allen turned out to be more about the interviewer than the interviewee as Aggers attempted to walk the dangerously thin line between benevolent uncle and desperate middle-aged man panting on the edge of the dance floor. He failed. “You weren’t even born then, oh dear” and “I’d have thought you’d be more of a one-day girl” and “I’m quite getting into your music” and “I’ve been out there and played a bit” and “it’s just destined to be” and “is this what you expected to find up here” and “we might go and see Warney later” – all suggesting that Aggers had positioned himself firmly on the pervy side of things.

“It had all, as with so many putative celebrity couplings, started with a tweet. Aggers was alone in a stand in Edgbaston. He was lost, but he was found. “We keep plugging the Twitter because it’s good fun,” said Aggers, who went on, not to put too fine a point on it, to admit that he has been stalking the young singer ever since the third Test. So it was that he knew Lily had bought a watch which … wait for it … “didn’t fit”. “It looked big,” was the Aggers verdict.”

Monday 24 August:

Jonathan Agnew writers on Twitter:

• I gave Will Buckley 24 hrs to aplogise for calling me a pervert, and he has declined.
• If you feel moved by this his boss is brian.oliver@observer.co.uk well, as you can imagine, I have taken being called a pervert quite badly.
• and you should hear how he described readers of theObserver to me……
• I will tell you how he described his readers (you) if he fails to print a total apology to me and my family on Sunday
• Don’t want him sacked…just an apology

[Five tweets over a 15 minute period, the last at 11:16 PM ]

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Meanwhile, more and more comments are left by readers of the Observer at the bottom of Buckley’s piece. Most of them attacked the writer for a ‘jealous’ and ‘nasty’ attack. You can read a long list of them here.

Tuesday 25 August:

The Observer receive more comments about the article throughout the morning and at around ten o’clock Lilly Allen publishes the following on her Twitter page:

• I rerally [sic] think this Will Buckley guy should apologise to @aggerscricket, he was nothing but kind and gentlemanly to me during our interview
• i dont know 1 person that agrees with The Observer on this one. Maybe this is Buckleys attempt at creating a name for himself as the demise
• of the Observer Monthlys(including Sport) are imminent. Sorry @aggerscricket , i should have left you all alone

[Three tweets over a 10 minute period]

At 2:48 p.m., the Telegraph publish the following article: Lily Allen defends Jonathan Agnew over ‘pervert’ slur

Meanwhile Jonathan Agnew writes on Twitter at around midday:

• “Apparently a statement from Buckley will be appearing soon in the comments under his “article””

At 3:15 pm Will Buckley publishes the following response in the comments’ section:

My, what a commotion. Before the tone becomes even more shrill I would like to apologise to Jonathan and his family for any offence caused by this article. It was intended to be a skit on Aggers and Tuffers and the cult of celebrity but has obviously not been received in this way. The joke missed. As they so often do in the blogosphere.

That said, it should perhaps be pointed out that at no stage did I describe Jonathan as a pervert. I am unlikely ever to be in a position to comment on Aggers’ sexual proclivities and even if I did find myself so placed I wouldn’t dream of doing so. The word I used was ‘pervy’ which to me is a Benny Hill style word rather than one to be taken too seriously.

There is also, it goes without saying, no foundation in my claim that Aggers is jealous of Tuffers. Who could be jealous of Tuffers? This was merely a piece of whimsy based on Jonathan being slightly pompous and huffy when Phil refused to become caught up in the excitement about Lily Allen coming to the TMS box and delivered his wonderful Denis Bergkamp line.

As I have written many times before, TMS is my favourite sports programme and I can’t wait for the team, tweets and all, to be broadcasting from South Africa.

Wednesday 26 August:

More comments followed Buckley’s apology overnight and the following morning Jonathan Agnew writes, once again on Twitter:

• “Just for record, am leaving it to the Obs Sports Ed to decide if that apology is sufficient. But what an eye-opener this has been for all to the power of new media. It is here and will change the way news is responded to, in particular. This showed what twitter can do. Thanks

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It’s an interesting story, with a few unlikely participants.

Firstly, it is interesting that a cricket commentator (see previous post) turned to social media to express his anger rather than a more traditional media channel, and, secondly, it is worth pointing out that Buckley blames  all of the ‘commotion’on the blogosphere (curiously he does not think his article has much to do with it) in his apology. He writes:

“The joke missed. As they so often do in the blogosphere.”

This naive – and rather dismissive – sentence betrays Buckley as someone who still hasn’t quite got it. And it also reminds me of a blog post written by Graham Holliday on his Noodlepie blog which is simply titled ‘Wankers’.

Nearly three years ago, he wrote:

“I came across this quote which perfectly sums up the clash of old and new mindsets – I’ve added links to make it a wee bit more understandable.

I do get the sense that the Guardian’s columnists are simply not used to this kind of medium, they are not used to getting feedback in public where they can’t just hit ‘delete’ to get rid of a pesky critic.

Suw …. likened such old school thinking to this:

It’s like them walking into a pub, making their pronouncements and then walking out. Later, they are shocked to find out that everyone is calling them a wanker.

Nowt new. I just love the last two sentences. Perfect.”

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image credit: speckled jim