Susan Boyle: the temptation to make crude disgusting comments was too great - it happened on the Nine Network's Today show this morning

Susan Boyle's Christmas CD is on top of the music charts all around the world. It is a just tribute to her talent - to her astonishing voice and musical interpretation. It's also a tribute to the woman herself, and this a major reason that people have taken to her so warmly. She is a tremendous social and entertainment contradiction, especially of people like Madonna, Pink, Lady Gaga and many others who pass across the television screens and news reports mostly for their celebrity. That fake, shallow, prejudiced Madonna is in a class of her own here.

Susan Boyle comes from a small village in Scotland; she probably looks like many of the women her age in that same village; and on her own account she has never had a boyfriend. To top the contradiction off, she is unashamedly a practising Catholic (how does she get away with it?). But as ordinary as she appears and despite the grave handicap of religious belief, she has had the determination to stick with her talent, which now in the most extraordinary circumstances has blossomed.

She is welcome proof for people that talent can win through if given a chance in the shallow often spiteful world of entertainment where besides having talent and good looks you have to be crude, promiscuous, drug-addicted and generally affront accepted behaviour norms to make it. I would not mind betting that the rush to embrace Susan Boyle and her talent is an expression of the distaste many people feel towards the entertainment world.

Richard Wilkins is the Today's show reporter on entertainment matters. His long years of experience and his generally sound judgements have justifiably earned him the status of 'expert'. He plays an important role in what I think is at the moment the best team the Today show has put before the cameras. As a foundation viewer of the show (it is part of my morning ritual) I think I can have an opinion. Lisa Wilkinson, the girl part of the boy-girl hosting duo, sets the standard. Her manner is warm and friendly. She is poised and dignified without ever appearing stiff. And she is never crude. For me she is at the moment the top woman on commercial television. While Karl Stefanovic, the other half of the duo, is on holidays Wilkins has taken the host chair and a person who calls himself Rosso has been roped in to do the entertainment segment.

I've never heard of Rosso but it is obvious he appears somewhere or other, most likely for an adolescent audience who giggles at fart jokes. In contrast to Richard Wilkins who shrewdly plays the straight man to his flamboyant American correspondents, exuberant gay Richard Reid and daffy southern gal Michele Mahone, Rosso behaves as though the spot is there for self-promotion. With a forced overdone ocker accent, he intrudes with attempts to be funny. Unfortunately, Rosso is not only unfunny, he is irritating.

This morning to leave us in no doubt about the state of his mind he gratuitously informed us of his opinion of Susan Boyle in terms that were crude and disgusting. He did this when anyone not short of the full quid would have followed up the news of the CD's worldwide success with some interesting information about the woman and her singing. But it seems Rosso is more than five-and-six short of the quid. Of course, it was in reference to Boyle's looks and sudden success, both musical and financial. It had to happen. It's a pity it had to happen on the Today show, achieving a sharp departure from the tone of the program.

Rosso, whoever he is, does not fit the Today show. The EP should take him aside and tell him to shut up and do his job without the juvenile comments or boot him off the program. It is so easy to flick over to News Breakfast on the ABC to listen to adults talking.

Wouldn't you think that at Christmas time when religious and non-religious alike want to avoid aggravation that Susan Boyle could be left alone with her success?

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com