Joey Deacon No More...

If you're of a certain age in the UK you will remember Joey Deacon...

You may have been called a Joey in your time....

But possibly no more...

There's a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that the BBC is on the wane... The most obvious being the BBC’s Christmas viewing numbers which hit a record low in 2025. The days when more than 20 million people tuned in for festive shows are gone. This year, even the King’s Christmas Broadcast drew only 4.6 million.

Unsurprising when kids these days spend more time on YouTube than on all the public service channels put together. TV isn’t just changing; people are walking away from it.

But does this matter?

Some on the Right enjoy watching the BBC struggle. They call it biased, or too progressive, and feel a certain satisfaction. But that feeling might not last. A fractured media world doesn’t necessarily help conservatives or anyone else. It just makes us all more isolated.

Possibly it is a problem if we fragment so much that we have no sense of a shared starting point.....

No more basis for calling someone a Joey....

But is that a bad ting..?

I dunno, having called several people a Joey and having been called one myself, numerous times, as a child, and having with some retrospect a certain level of guilt about this, but knowing that is share d gives me a gutteral sense that i should be more inclusive today....

And today's gen are less likely to get that experience...

What with so much choice about what they can watch/ stream there's less chance of a whole nation calling out Joey..... and then 20 years on collectively feeling a bit bad about what they all did, back then....

So in the age of 'Joethey' that makes me a little bit sad, but not that sad....