>The BBC is quietly editing classic radio comedies to remove racially insensitive and politically incorrect jokes as the corporation grapples with changing audience expectations.
>Repeats of shows including *Dad’s Army, Steptoe and Son and I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again* on BBC Radio 4 Extra have been altered, sometimes to remove entire sketches.
>Edits have been made to programmes over several years to remove content likely now to be considered racist or misogynistic. The changes were documented by an anonymous Radio 4 Extra listener, who bemoaned them as “woke cuts”.
>Some cuts expunge mentions of the disgraced stars Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris.
>*I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again*, a sketch show starring John Cleese, Bill Oddie and other Cambridge Footlights graduates, was at the sharp end of many of the cuts, according to the compiler’s dossier. A repeat of a 1970 episode was edited to remove a gag from Cleese about scantily clad women on *Top of the Pops*. Impersonating a BBC spokesman, Cleese said in the original recording: “We have noticed that it is possible to see right up to the girls’ knickers, owing to the shortness of their miniskirts, so we’ve asked the girls to drop them.”
>In a sketch from 1970, David Hatch adopted an Indian accent and was described as being “browned off”. The skit was removed. Other deleted sketches included a spoof of Harris’s songs, titled Rolf Harris’s Dirty Songbook.
>A repeat of a 1971 radio episode of *Steptoe and Son* was edited to cut “poofy” from a line in which Wilfrid Brambell said: “You’re carrying on like some poofy Victorian poet.” A similar snip was made to a 1974 *Dad’s Army*, during which Corporal Jones referred to Chinese people as “yellow friends”. The BBC stripped a mention of the n-word from a 1972 episode of *Lines From My Grandfather’s Forehead*, a Ronnie Barker sketch show. It also removed a reference to African people being “cannibals” from a 1950 episode of *Much Binding in the Marsh*, a comedy set in a RAF station.
>A listener complained to the BBC about the cuts last year, saying: “It is best for the original archive material to go out uncensored, and let audiences make up their own minds about what might be ‘offensive’.”
>A spokesman for the BBC said: “Listeners enjoy a huge number of old comedies from the archives on 4 Extra and on occasion we edit some episodes so they’re suitable for broadcast today, including removing racially offensive language and stereotypes from decades ago, as the vast majority of our audience would expect.”
>Tim Davie, the BBC director-general, has voiced anxiety about the broadcaster being caught up in the culture wars. “Navigating that in my life is huge, in terms of what’s progressive versus what’s woke,” he said last year.
>#On the cutting room floor
>**Much Binding in the Marsh (year of repeat: 2020)** Reference to Africans being “cannibals” cut
>**I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again (2020)** Deleted sketch involving an impersonation of an Eskimo with a Chinese accent
>**I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again (2018)** References to an Indian boy being “browned off” and a “tinted person” cut
>**Lines From My Grandfather’s Forehead (2020)** The n-word removed from a skit on the Oxford English Dictionary
>#Rich ‘should pay more’ in BBC reform
>David Dimbleby has criticised the BBC licence fee as “unfair” and said that linking it to council tax would make it fairer (Jake Kanter writes).
>The former *Question Time* presenter said the corporation should acknowledge that a flat fee of £159 punished the poorest in society.
>Dimbleby, 83, told Radio 4: “There’s a simple way in which the BBC can get on the front foot, which is by suggesting the licence fee figure, the gross figure of £159, should not be paid flat rate by everybody, but the richest should pay more and the poorest less. And the simple way of doing it would be to attach an element of the licence fee to the council tax band.”
>The presenter first raised the idea in a letter to The Times yesterday, after the government signalled its ambition to replace the licence fee with a new funding model when the BBC’s royal charter is renewed in 2028.
>Dimbleby wrote: “The BBC’s revenue would be maintained but the burden would fall more fairly on the public.”
The BBC is so desperate to please everyone they end up pleasing nobody
Might as well edit out history documentaries with this logic.
Half the time these shows are just using the slurs in a way to show the character is a piece of shit for using them.
I’m not a fan of this. If you want to watch old programmes then they should be as written. Attach a statement putting them in their historical context if need be, if attitudes have changed.
What next, editing classic literature because of its outdated attitudes?
The issue I have is the use of the word ‘quietly’. Just be upfront. Put a note at the beginning of the show saying some sections have been edited for prime time, but provide a link to an archive of original content.
Next thing they will be banning books… Oh wait, that’s already happening in Texas
Editing old media is like pretending it never happened.
Warner Bros put this disclaimer on some of the older Tom and Jerry cartoons:
> “These animated shorts are products of their time. Some of them may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros. view of today’s society, these animated shorts are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.”
Surely the BBC could do something similar, and not whitewash stuff out of existence?
This is why no one want to pay for a licence! That and they protect pedophiles!
What is the point? Should be kept original if for nothing else but to preserve history and not paint over it pretending things weren’t how they were?
Would be impossible for them to edit out all of Alf Garnett’s old bits anyway, just leave it
Wow. Rewriting history much? Orwell would see the funny side I’m sure.
This is morally wrong; this is who we were in the seventies and eighties. To edit that is to deny who we were. Attitudes were different then, just as they were during the Second World War. If you’re worried about offending people, run a disclaimer before the show that can’t be skipped on iPlayer, telling them that the show contains contents that might be offensive
For fuck sake. Stick a disclaimer at the start and show them exactly as they should be shown. Stop with the stupid fucking censorship.
This is bizarre.
I’m fine with the BBC just *not showing* older shows that demonstrate outdated attitudes – but I’m not a fan of them editing those shows.
Attitudes have not changed. We now have minorities with butt-hurt and virtue-signalling fools with no sense of humour. BBC should get funding from Biden’s administration – it is not British anymore.
There’ll be nothing left of some of these shows if they remove all the bits that are offensive by today’s standards.
> According to Den Boon, the phrase has acquired a permanent place in the Dutch language over the past forty years. “It is often used jokingly when a topic threatens to come up that you would rather not bring up,” he explained in Volgspot. Initially, this often actually happened in combination with the Second World War. “But nowadays it is also very often used in other ways. The economy page recently said, ‘Don’t mention the dollar’ because the dollar was very low. Or in the context of the coronavirus: ‘Don’t mention the bat.'”
What kind of bell are you to watch something that you have a choice NOT to watch and then don’t understand the time frame? I watched new statesmen the other week which is ridiculous and I was holding my hand over my mouth at the shit that was said but it was more “I can’t believe they got away with it but times change”. Those time did change for the better but you can’t edit history
And there’s the rewriting of history that people were definitely wrong to be worried about.
Yeah I can’t stand it when they cut stuff out.
Most recent was watching Home Alone 2 and they cut the bit where he bumps into Trump in the lobby.
There is a place for both. You don’t need to erase the past but you also dont need to normalise things which are no longer acceptable.
For example in at least one episode of Only Fools and Horses they say “going down the pakki shop”, which was pretty common parlance in the early 80s. If you hear it now it jars, but it also allows the people who still say it to think that it’s OK.
It’s now cut from the episode when broadcast but I think such episodes should be available uncut if saught out and chosen by a viewer with the suitable note to the reason why it’s not broadcast in its full origonal state.
As a POC, I don’t support this. I want to get the real feel of the show and know the context of that time period, if you’re a fan of shows in general you shouldn’t support this.
it was a different time and their view are outdated and wrong. We don’t need to change what happened in the past just keep it out of the stuff in the future
Dear BBC … keep fucking with shit like this and I’m in agreement for your funding to go …
It was written at the time like this , so stop fucking with it…
Oh dear, if LWT reruns “Mind your Language” they would have to cut almost the entire show!
Problem is we can all be common sense non offended but it just takes one Twitter wanker to get offended and the BBC (read any company or institution) shits their pants so they prefer to avoid it.
Pathetic really.
Hang on. The article doesn’t mention the *archive* copies being edited. The broadcast versions, maybe, but not the archives.
Nearly everything on Britbox has a disclaimer saying it contains language, views, whatever of the time. I watched an episode of Dads Army the other day with Pike pulling his eyes and doing a bad Chinese voice. They’d never show that on the telly, but it’s on Britbox. I think it’s even on the DVDs actually.
I agree, we shouldn’t edit history. These episodes are a Zeitgeist of the language and attitudes of the time, and it’s important to remember that. But also to present it as such, and remember that attitudes and times have changed. We have to remember that broadcasters generally are broadcasting in today’s world, so they gave to reflect that.
I’m waiting to see if Britbox dare put any of Alf Garnett’s stuff on, mind…
See the “Ministry of Truth” lovers are out in force and happy to claim that editing history and to pretend the past didn’t happen is a “Good Thing”… talk about censorship to create a sanitised and “approved” history that never actually existed.
Bring out the “Ministry of Truth” and let’s edit history so it matches the approved version and not reality.
Must hide factual history so no-one can learn from our mistakes and must pretend we have always been perfect politically correct people… FFS
Next with the book banning because it doesn’t match modern views
So…that’s basically the entire runtime of a lot of shows 😀
29 comments
**Article**
>The BBC is quietly editing classic radio comedies to remove racially insensitive and politically incorrect jokes as the corporation grapples with changing audience expectations.
>Repeats of shows including *Dad’s Army, Steptoe and Son and I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again* on BBC Radio 4 Extra have been altered, sometimes to remove entire sketches.
>Edits have been made to programmes over several years to remove content likely now to be considered racist or misogynistic. The changes were documented by an anonymous Radio 4 Extra listener, who bemoaned them as “woke cuts”.
>Some cuts expunge mentions of the disgraced stars Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris.
>*I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again*, a sketch show starring John Cleese, Bill Oddie and other Cambridge Footlights graduates, was at the sharp end of many of the cuts, according to the compiler’s dossier. A repeat of a 1970 episode was edited to remove a gag from Cleese about scantily clad women on *Top of the Pops*. Impersonating a BBC spokesman, Cleese said in the original recording: “We have noticed that it is possible to see right up to the girls’ knickers, owing to the shortness of their miniskirts, so we’ve asked the girls to drop them.”
>In a sketch from 1970, David Hatch adopted an Indian accent and was described as being “browned off”. The skit was removed. Other deleted sketches included a spoof of Harris’s songs, titled Rolf Harris’s Dirty Songbook.
>A repeat of a 1971 radio episode of *Steptoe and Son* was edited to cut “poofy” from a line in which Wilfrid Brambell said: “You’re carrying on like some poofy Victorian poet.” A similar snip was made to a 1974 *Dad’s Army*, during which Corporal Jones referred to Chinese people as “yellow friends”. The BBC stripped a mention of the n-word from a 1972 episode of *Lines From My Grandfather’s Forehead*, a Ronnie Barker sketch show. It also removed a reference to African people being “cannibals” from a 1950 episode of *Much Binding in the Marsh*, a comedy set in a RAF station.
>A listener complained to the BBC about the cuts last year, saying: “It is best for the original archive material to go out uncensored, and let audiences make up their own minds about what might be ‘offensive’.”
>A spokesman for the BBC said: “Listeners enjoy a huge number of old comedies from the archives on 4 Extra and on occasion we edit some episodes so they’re suitable for broadcast today, including removing racially offensive language and stereotypes from decades ago, as the vast majority of our audience would expect.”
>Tim Davie, the BBC director-general, has voiced anxiety about the broadcaster being caught up in the culture wars. “Navigating that in my life is huge, in terms of what’s progressive versus what’s woke,” he said last year.
>#On the cutting room floor
>**Much Binding in the Marsh (year of repeat: 2020)** Reference to Africans being “cannibals” cut
>**I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again (2020)** Deleted sketch involving an impersonation of an Eskimo with a Chinese accent
>**I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again (2018)** References to an Indian boy being “browned off” and a “tinted person” cut
>**Lines From My Grandfather’s Forehead (2020)** The n-word removed from a skit on the Oxford English Dictionary
>#Rich ‘should pay more’ in BBC reform
>David Dimbleby has criticised the BBC licence fee as “unfair” and said that linking it to council tax would make it fairer (Jake Kanter writes).
>The former *Question Time* presenter said the corporation should acknowledge that a flat fee of £159 punished the poorest in society.
>Dimbleby, 83, told Radio 4: “There’s a simple way in which the BBC can get on the front foot, which is by suggesting the licence fee figure, the gross figure of £159, should not be paid flat rate by everybody, but the richest should pay more and the poorest less. And the simple way of doing it would be to attach an element of the licence fee to the council tax band.”
>The presenter first raised the idea in a letter to The Times yesterday, after the government signalled its ambition to replace the licence fee with a new funding model when the BBC’s royal charter is renewed in 2028.
>Dimbleby wrote: “The BBC’s revenue would be maintained but the burden would fall more fairly on the public.”
The BBC is so desperate to please everyone they end up pleasing nobody
Might as well edit out history documentaries with this logic.
Half the time these shows are just using the slurs in a way to show the character is a piece of shit for using them.
I’m not a fan of this. If you want to watch old programmes then they should be as written. Attach a statement putting them in their historical context if need be, if attitudes have changed.
What next, editing classic literature because of its outdated attitudes?
The issue I have is the use of the word ‘quietly’. Just be upfront. Put a note at the beginning of the show saying some sections have been edited for prime time, but provide a link to an archive of original content.
Next thing they will be banning books… Oh wait, that’s already happening in Texas
Editing old media is like pretending it never happened.
Warner Bros put this disclaimer on some of the older Tom and Jerry cartoons:
> “These animated shorts are products of their time. Some of them may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros. view of today’s society, these animated shorts are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.”
Surely the BBC could do something similar, and not whitewash stuff out of existence?
This is why no one want to pay for a licence! That and they protect pedophiles!
What is the point? Should be kept original if for nothing else but to preserve history and not paint over it pretending things weren’t how they were?
Would be impossible for them to edit out all of Alf Garnett’s old bits anyway, just leave it
Wow. Rewriting history much? Orwell would see the funny side I’m sure.
This is morally wrong; this is who we were in the seventies and eighties. To edit that is to deny who we were. Attitudes were different then, just as they were during the Second World War. If you’re worried about offending people, run a disclaimer before the show that can’t be skipped on iPlayer, telling them that the show contains contents that might be offensive
For fuck sake. Stick a disclaimer at the start and show them exactly as they should be shown. Stop with the stupid fucking censorship.
This is bizarre.
I’m fine with the BBC just *not showing* older shows that demonstrate outdated attitudes – but I’m not a fan of them editing those shows.
Attitudes have not changed. We now have minorities with butt-hurt and virtue-signalling fools with no sense of humour. BBC should get funding from Biden’s administration – it is not British anymore.
There’ll be nothing left of some of these shows if they remove all the bits that are offensive by today’s standards.
In other news “Don’t mention the war!” has been added to the Dutch dictionary: https://nltimes.nl/2022/01/22/dont-mention-war-entering-dutch-dictionary
> According to Den Boon, the phrase has acquired a permanent place in the Dutch language over the past forty years. “It is often used jokingly when a topic threatens to come up that you would rather not bring up,” he explained in Volgspot. Initially, this often actually happened in combination with the Second World War. “But nowadays it is also very often used in other ways. The economy page recently said, ‘Don’t mention the dollar’ because the dollar was very low. Or in the context of the coronavirus: ‘Don’t mention the bat.'”
What kind of bell are you to watch something that you have a choice NOT to watch and then don’t understand the time frame? I watched new statesmen the other week which is ridiculous and I was holding my hand over my mouth at the shit that was said but it was more “I can’t believe they got away with it but times change”. Those time did change for the better but you can’t edit history
And there’s the rewriting of history that people were definitely wrong to be worried about.
Yeah I can’t stand it when they cut stuff out.
Most recent was watching Home Alone 2 and they cut the bit where he bumps into Trump in the lobby.
There is a place for both. You don’t need to erase the past but you also dont need to normalise things which are no longer acceptable.
For example in at least one episode of Only Fools and Horses they say “going down the pakki shop”, which was pretty common parlance in the early 80s. If you hear it now it jars, but it also allows the people who still say it to think that it’s OK.
It’s now cut from the episode when broadcast but I think such episodes should be available uncut if saught out and chosen by a viewer with the suitable note to the reason why it’s not broadcast in its full origonal state.
As a POC, I don’t support this. I want to get the real feel of the show and know the context of that time period, if you’re a fan of shows in general you shouldn’t support this.
it was a different time and their view are outdated and wrong. We don’t need to change what happened in the past just keep it out of the stuff in the future
Dear BBC … keep fucking with shit like this and I’m in agreement for your funding to go …
It was written at the time like this , so stop fucking with it…
Oh dear, if LWT reruns “Mind your Language” they would have to cut almost the entire show!
Problem is we can all be common sense non offended but it just takes one Twitter wanker to get offended and the BBC (read any company or institution) shits their pants so they prefer to avoid it.
Pathetic really.
Hang on. The article doesn’t mention the *archive* copies being edited. The broadcast versions, maybe, but not the archives.
Nearly everything on Britbox has a disclaimer saying it contains language, views, whatever of the time. I watched an episode of Dads Army the other day with Pike pulling his eyes and doing a bad Chinese voice. They’d never show that on the telly, but it’s on Britbox. I think it’s even on the DVDs actually.
I agree, we shouldn’t edit history. These episodes are a Zeitgeist of the language and attitudes of the time, and it’s important to remember that. But also to present it as such, and remember that attitudes and times have changed. We have to remember that broadcasters generally are broadcasting in today’s world, so they gave to reflect that.
I’m waiting to see if Britbox dare put any of Alf Garnett’s stuff on, mind…
See the “Ministry of Truth” lovers are out in force and happy to claim that editing history and to pretend the past didn’t happen is a “Good Thing”… talk about censorship to create a sanitised and “approved” history that never actually existed.
Bring out the “Ministry of Truth” and let’s edit history so it matches the approved version and not reality.
Must hide factual history so no-one can learn from our mistakes and must pretend we have always been perfect politically correct people… FFS
Next with the book banning because it doesn’t match modern views
So…that’s basically the entire runtime of a lot of shows 😀
On a serious note…this is a ridiculous idea