Twitter reduces BBC hacks to tears with redundancy notice

Radio 4 translates Jack Dorsey coder kiss-off mail

Radio 4 showed why it’s the guardian of all that is good, sensible and British this morning by collapsing into laughter while reviewing Jack Dorsey’s rambling farewell to 8 per cent of Twitter staff.

Beeb biz hack Simon Jack rounded off a discussion about the Twitter reorg with tech reporter Dave Lee by noting “I’ve never knowingly spent a penny on Twitter or been moved to buy anything.”

He followed this up by reading out Dorsey’s now famous email to staff. Or trying to.

“Emails like this are usually riddled with corporate speak so I’m to give it to you straight…” he intoned in his best BBC voice.

Unfortunately, at the line “The team has been working around the clock to produce streamlined roadmap”...Jack [the Beeb one] lost it. As, by the sound of it did everyone in the studio: presenters, producers and all.

It took them some seconds to regain their composure, at which point Jack [the Beeb one] remembered Bush House’s mission to educate and inform, as well as entertain, and gave this precis of Jack’s [the Twitter one's] opus.

“He could’ve given it a bit straighter saying one in 12 of you reading this email are fired.”

If Jack [the Beeb's one] ever gets bored with journalism, he could probably save the broadcaster a fortune in printer paper alone by rewriting its famously convoluted memos.

You can relive Radio 4’s slip into zoo broadcasting here, at 24m 35s in. ®