BBC Radio or Comedy Farce?

I literally couldn’t believe my ears when I heard Les Ross of BBC Radio Midlands interviewing (if that’s what you could call it) the writer and broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli. It was far more akin to an Alan Partridge sketch than a BBC radio interview.  Les Ross began with an inane question about whether Hardeep would describe himself as Asian British Scottish, British Scottish Asian and all the combinations thereafter, which Kohli cleverly averted saying that too much prominence on your origins is unnecessary these days.  With puerile nervous laughter after every remark he made, Ross demonstrated a lack of social awareness and a lack of knowledge for Singh Kohli’s book, Indian Takeaway, confusing the comedy memoir with Kohli’s BBC Radio 4 series about the partition of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The farce culminated in Kohli deciding to leave, understandably, as the interview was totally out of step with any sense of modernity or reality. What on earth has happened to a “multi cultural BBC”?