Hava Nagila! (Let Us Rejoice!)

 

I quite like the daytime show Countdown. A simple words and numbers based competition between two nerdy competitors that has been running since the first minutes of Channel4’s existence. There’s also a night-time bawdy version called Eight Out Of Ten Cats Does Countdown, where comedians lark about whilst trying to do the quiz (usually badly).

Both feature Rachel Riley who is of Jewish decent, now married to a Russian.  She’s been very vocal on anti-Semitic (and anti-Zionist) issues over the last few years. Of course my position on this has been made abundantly clear.

But now she’s done too far. Firstly she has tweeted a photo of herself with a T-shirt saying

“Jeremy Corbyn is a Racist”

and then shortly afterwards photoshopped the message out of the picture.

Earlier in the year someone had tweeted that the Durham Miners Gala Brass Band played “Hava Nagila”, the folk song sung a Jewish celebrations. Rachel Riley then tweeted

“About as tasteful as showing Black Panther at a Klan Rally”.

I’ve already commented that Jewish music is part of my podcast lexicon, and will remain so. I have Jewish friends and would like to think I could enjoy their music as much as they enjoy mine.

There are calls today for Rachel Riley to be sacked.  Others have taken to Social Media to re-photoshop her T-shirt with alternative messages.  Is this the end of her career?

The fact is she’s due to go on maternity leave soon, and will, presumably, be off our screens for a while.  How long is not clear. I’d be happy with a period of say….. 50 years?

Bye Rachel!  You’ve been cancelled. At least in my house. Bring back Carol Vorderman!