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article-2267351-0C9CFBB300000578-650_634x415.jpg Censoring Fawlty's gags makes the Beeb look more bonkers than Basil
For many sitcom fans, ‘The Germans’ is simply the funniest half-hour ever broadcast — that episode of Fawlty Towers with the moose head, the fire drill, and John Cleese as the deranged hotelier Basil, goose-stepping and Sieg Heiling in front of a table of aghast German guests.
But for the BBC, apparently, it’s a source of embarrassment. When the 1975 show was repeated on BBC2 last Sunday, a segment was edited to remove racist language. Comic perfection it may be, but it seems the episode can no longer be screened uncensored.

The offending scene, featuring alcoholic old duffer Major Gowen (played by the elderly character actor Ballard Berkeley), wasn’t crucial to the plot. But it was vital to the episode’s theme — how Britain couldn’t shake off its distrust of other nations.
Censoring: For many fans, The Germans episode of Fawlty Towers is one of the funniest episodes.

Censoring: For many fans, 'The Germans' episode of Fawlty Towers is one of the funniest episodes. But when the show was repeated on BBC2 last Sunday, a segment was edited to remove racist language

In the 60-second clip arbitrarily cut by Auntie on Sunday, the Major ambles across to the reception desk of Basil’s shabby, family-run hotel in Torquay and begins reminiscing about a girl he once took to the Oval cricket ground to see England play India, before the war.

‘Strange thing,’ the Major burbles, ‘was that throughout the morning she kept referring to the Indians as n*****s. “No, no, no, no, no,” I said. “n*****s are the West Indians. These people are wogs.” I do wish I could remember her name?.?.?. she’s still got my wallet.’

No one could mistake Basil Fawlty for a sensitive soul, but he’s clearly uneasy at this blatant racism, and steers the conversation away. By the end of the day, though, he perpetrates far greater offences himself.

Don't mention the ***: Censorship row as BBC cuts the Major's 'racist' lines from classic Fawlty Towers episode

Unable to stop referring to Nazis and the war, he reduces one German visitor to floods of tears by impersonating Hitler, and blames his guests for the debacle — ‘You started it,’ he screeches. ‘Yes you did?.?.?. you invaded Poland!’

This is farce doubling as satire. Cleese knew exactly the sort of Little Englander he wanted to send up when he created the series. Basil was based on a former naval commander named Donald Sinclair, who, with his formidable wife Betty, ran the Gleneagles hotel in Torquay.

The comedian stayed there in 1970 while filming Monty Python and was mesmerised by Sinclair’s rudeness and bigoted attitudes. The hotel-keeper was notorious for his aggression and eccentricities — he once threw a party of guests out of the lounge for trying to order sandwiches.
Comic: Cleese knew exactly the sort of Little Englander he wanted to send up when he created the series. Some of the cast of Fawlty Towers are pictured

Comic: Cleese knew exactly the sort of Little Englander he wanted to send up when he created the series. Some of the cast of Fawlty Towers are pictured

He was the type who would fume, ‘I fought a war for the likes of you!’ whenever he felt the world hadn’t shown him enough respect.

Fawlty Towers is full-volume comedy. You can’t miss the jokes, they’re bellowed in your face. And the biggest joke is Basil, Cleese’s version of Donald Sinclair.

We sympathise with Basil; we even hope he will occasionally come off best in his running battles with his snobbish, hen-pecking wife Sybil (portrayed beautifully by Prunella Scales). But we never admire him. He’s a figure of fun, not a role model.

We can see, too, that the Major is a senile version of Basil, a generation older and pickled in gin — stranded not in the Battle of Britain but in the Boer War.

To take offence at anything these characters say is bizarre.

The BBC argues that in censoring the episode it was considering a family audience at 7.30pm. It’s not considerate, it’s overbearing control-freakery.

At most, all that was needed was a word of guidance to viewers before it went out: ‘This is vintage comedy from the Seventies.

‘Attitudes to racist words were different then; some people might find certain phrases offensive.’

That’s enough to let people make up their own minds if they’re worried about children and maiden aunts. Paying the licence fee ought to give us the right to decide for ourselves about Britain’s classic comedy — not to be mollycoddled by programmers.

Will Andrew Sachs’ Spanish waiter, Manuel (‘Don’t mind him, he’s from Barcelona’) be the next airbrushed out of the show in case it offends Spain? Will Dad’s Army be bleeped every time Corporal Jones declares the fuzzie-wuzzies don’t like it up ’em?
Stars: John Cleese as Basil Fawlty and Andrew Sachs as Manuel are pictured

Sadly, though, this isn’t the first time BBC eagerness to censor its past output has robbed us of brilliant comedy. The Goodies — the most successful laughter series of the Seventies and a show that drew ratings-busting audiences — is simply never repeated.

BBC executives have always refused to explain why they have locked away this surreal and often breathtakingly funny show. But censorship is widely seen as one of the reasons.

The Goodies was first shown in 1970, when programmers saw The Black And White Minstrel Show — where white men blacked up their faces and sang close-harmony ballads in zip-a-dee-doo-dah accents — as clean-cut family fun for primetime Saturday night TV.

Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, stars and writers of The Goodies, saw the ludicrous side?.?.?. and sent it up rotten. The opening credits of several Goodies series even featured Garden stripped to his shorts, hair in an afro wig and his face and body smeared black as tar.
No one was outraged, of course. Those were different times.

Today, the three Goodies are all highly respected comedy veterans; they wouldn’t dream of shooting similar scenes now, but nor are they ashamed: on the contrary, they are proud of their satire’s contemporary courage.

In one 1974 episode, they poked fun so mercilessly at the apartheid regime in South Africa that the BBC demanded cuts.

‘They said it was unfair to the South African police, who we were a bit critical of,’ Garden said.
The storyline saw Bill Oddie as a servant called Mbopo. His accent was a wild parody of a Deep South slave — ‘Tank you boss for dat mos’ agreeable kick on de bum!’

The show had 11 million viewers — at 7pm on a Monday. It deserves to be hailed as an early example of the anti-apartheid movement in Britain, more than 15 years before Nelson Mandela was freed from prison. Instead, it seems unlikely the BBC will ever screen it again.
Cautious: This is not the first time the BBC has censored comedy shows from yesteryear

Cautious: This is not the first time the BBC has censored comedy shows from yesteryear

Another scathing satire on racism has also been quietly dropped from the repeat schedules, though its central character was once a byword in Britain.

In Till Death Us Do Part, Alf Garnett was a blinkered, ranting, bigoted misogynist. He was also a patriot, and a loving family man at heart.

The contradictions made him just about bearable, but never likeable. Played with goggle-eyed spluttering gusto by Warren Mitchell, he held up a mirror to the worst of British behaviour.

The language was intemperate, to say the least. Here he is, longing for England to be a world power again: ‘We will rise like lions and get our great British Empire back, that your bloody Labour rubbish gave away to a load of bloody coons and wogs! Who made such a muck up of it they’ve had to come over here and scrounge off of us!’

And here’s Alf’s definition of Scousers: ‘Up in Liverpool, they’re all red-faced Micks. A bloody Irish colony up there, innit, bloody Paddies, they’re worse than the Pakistanis, they are. Bloody lazy sods.’

Writer Johnny Speight didn’t just risk offending millions with that character — he also faced the danger that people could actually agree with Alf. As a grammar school pupil, I remember one master telling us: ‘Listen to Alf Garnett, boys — he’s the only man who dares tell the truth in this country!’

Even at 14, most of us knew Alf was pathetic — and the teacher had revealed himself as an idiot.
Speight trusted his audience to appreciate the satire. If the comedy was offensive, it was because the reality was so much worse.

Pubs, football stadiums and factories were full of men who did talk like Alf. Laughing at them was the best and bravest thing to do.

There are no Boer War veterans left today. Men like Major Gowen are a long-vanished breed.

But if we let the BBC wield the censor’s scissors whenever they like, they will get away with being as imperious, bossy and bullying as Sybil Fawlty herself?.?.?. while we are cringeing and fawning like her hapless husband.

‘BA-SIIIIL!!!!’

Cristopher Stephens - Daily Mail Online
Added 01/27/13 by: Stavro Arrgolus

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Uberdufus   Offline  -  Member  -  02-05-13 09:15 PM  -  11 years ago
fiogf49gjkf0d
Progress? Upon reflection, one does "progress" closer to the waterfall as one floats downstream.
Stavro Arrgolus   Offline  -  Editor, MP3  -  01-27-13 11:17 AM  -  11 years ago
fiogf49gjkf0d
"Call this progress? 'Cos I don't!"

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