Wednesday 23 January 2013

"Censorship row as BBC cuts bad language from classic Fawlty Towers episode"

From The Daily Mail:

It is the episode of Fawlty Towers best remembered for the line ‘Don’t mention the war’ and John Cleese’s silly walk when impersonating Hitler.

The references have proved controversial before, but when 'The Germans' was repeated on BBC2 on Sunday evening it wasn’t our European neighbours that the corporation was worried about offending. Instead, the episode was edited to omit bad language – only for some viewers to then complain that the BBC was ‘airbrushing history’...

Regular viewer Major Gowen told The Mail about his wife's reaction: "The strange thing was, throughout the morning she kept referring to the BBC as bastards. 'No, no, no,' I said, 'Basil Fawlty was a bastard. The BBC are cunts'."

6 comments:

Bill Quango MP said...

I did watch some of that episode. Still good comedy.

I wonder what a BBC edit of Blazing Saddles might be like?

proglodyte said...

There would Mark....the bit where George the automatic pilot was re-inflated by the stewardess. Perfectly acceptable by PC standards.

Mark Wadsworth said...

P, woah there! She was being forced to give oral sex to a man who as usual did nothing in return to satisfy her needs. And then she smoked a cigarette afterwards. Very un-PC.

Anonymous said...

It took me a while to remember what the paedophile reference was in Airplane! Of course it's Peter Graves asking the little boy if he'd ever seen a grown man naked.

Mark Wadsworth said...

RA, or whether he's ever had a dog rub itself against his leg.

James Higham said...

This one stank, it really did.