Year Zero

 I had  misread the headline. Why, I thought, was Boris Johnson, our blonde bombshell of a London mayor, blasting that great, if aging, Australian rock band AC/DC? A quick look at the eight records he'd take to a desert island suggests full on stadium rock is not his bag, man! His choices were pretty much straight down the middle from the Beatles "Here Comes the Sun", and including J.S. Bach's "St Matthew Passion". Mind you he did chose "Start Me Up" by the Stones which is quite appropriate in the circs.

Then I re-read it. "BC or BCE? The BBC's edict on how we date events is AD (absolute drivel)." Boy, is he livid. Apparently the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had from somewhere in the depths of its fundamentals come up with the notion that the use of  "Before Christ", and "Anno Domini" "BC/AD" should be dropped and in its place they'll use "Before Common Era" and "Common Era".

Boris bangs on about the licence fee and the dictatorial, undemocratic, bureaucratic bungling Beeb and is generally incandescent about the whole thing. It's claimed that the Beeb dreamt up this wheeze so as not to upset  non Christians. Well, you can imagine the uproar this has generated, besides Boris blowing a gasket.

So I turned to the BBC's own religious website . Nothing there. Next I looked on the BBC main website - not a sausage. I then searched for any reference on any of the BBC's sites. Again, ziltch. Where was the announcement?

I wondered whether "BC" and "AD" had been excised from all  BBC's articles, programmes and web-sites. The Beeb's  History site seemed a good place to start. I headed for "British History" and the "Timeline".

As I moved the toggle to the left up popped "23 BC Iron Age". Moving slightly to the right there standing proud was "51 AD Roman Britain"; and all the way to the "Summer of 410 AD". However, mysteriously after that date the "AD" is missing.

I realised what was happening, the Beeb had for years been softening us up for this monumental change. Since 411 - AD!

Well it hasn't worked...over 200,000 entries on Google is evidence of that, along with the outcries from Boris, Melanie Philips, the British National Party and a million Sunday Mail readers.

Again it's the Guardian that has sniffed out the truth. And Boris can go back to running London.