Paul Gambaccini: sack Chris Moyles over Auschwitz comments

Paul Gambaccini has called for Radio 1 breakfast show host Chris Moyles to be sacked following his recent comments about Auschwitz.

Gambaccini, who hosts a two-hour show on Radio 2 on Saturday evenings, last night told an audience at Oxford University – which included the BBC's director of audio and music, Tim Davie – that Moyles should go following a series of controversial statements on his breakfast show.

"I find his continual presence on Radio 1 unacceptable. Chris Moyles should be gone," Gambaccini said in a lecture. "His recent comments about Auschwitz involved real people and their ancestors. That is no joking matter for them. To encourage this or sit by whilst it happens is unprofessional. He has done it so many times. He has no sense of responsibility."

Moyles caused controversy last month when he told listeners about his adventures filming the BBC1 genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are?.

"Unlike a lot of the Who Do You Think You Are? shows I didn't go to Auschwitz," he said. "Pretty much everyone goes there whether or not they're Jewish. They just seem to pass through there on their way to Florida."

The BBC said it regretted Moyles's comments, which "were misjudged and we are speaking to Chris".

Gambaccini also condemned Moyles – who had audience of 7.3 million weekly listeners on average in the last three months of 2008 for his breakfast show – for his apparent homophobia towards the likes of singer Will Young, which he said merely reinforced negative stereotypes.

Giving the last of his quartet of lectures as Oxford's News International professor of broadcast media, Gambaccini also condemned those at Radio 1 who defended Moyles.

"I am nauseated by the Radio 1 press office constantly rationalising his behaviour," he said. "If we do not get our own house in order, then sooner or later somebody else will and they might break the furniture in the process."

Davie, who had to deliver the vote of thanks for Gambaccini following his lecture, praised the veteran DJ and said of Moyles that "picking on people because of their sexuality was not appropriate to broadcasting".

The BBC director of audio and music added that he had made his views on taste clear to Moyles in a face-to-face interview.

In October last year Gambaccini strongly criticised Russell Brand and Lesley Douglas, the former Radio 2 controller who hired him, over the "Sachsgate" affair.

Guardian