The BBC's guardians of political correctness have taken the biscuit. To be specific, they've taken the biscuit off-air. Last Thursday, on This Week, Andrew Neil jokily referred to his co-hosts Diane Abbott and Michael Portillo as "the chocolate Hobnob and custard cream of late-night telly". A few viewers decided that the word chocolate was a racist reference to Miss Abbott's skin colour. Instantly, the BBC cancelled a repeat of the episode and erased it from its online iPlayer. Inviting the leader of the BNP on to Question Time was one thing, but the corporation was damned if it was going to have its good name besmirched by a bigoted comestible. A year ago, the BBC's course of action would have seemed startling. Now, though, it seems characteristic, because some people at the BBC apparently view humour in the way the rest of us view swine flu. This month, it decreed that comedy must not be "derogatory". Last Tuesday, the BBC Trust criticised the panel show Mock the Week because one of its stars, Frankie Boyle, joked about the facial features of Rebecca Adlington, the Olympic swimmer. But even before the ban on "derogatory" gags, senior figures in comedy were expressing frustration at the BBC's increasing nervousness about humour. Take Jimmy Mulville, who runs the company that makesHave I Got News for You. At the Edinburgh Television Festival in August, Mr Mulville said it was becoming harder to get risqué jokes past the BBC's censors. "My worry," he said, "is that we're having our tastes set at a dial by the tabloid press." Mr Mulville was alluding to the anger with which newspapers reacted to the prank telephone calls made to Andrew Sachs by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. But that can't be the only reason that the BBC has become so jumpy. No newspaper was outraged by the chocolate Hobnob. The BBC is setting its own taste dial – and the dial is right beside the panic button. Look at the justification given for the biscuit censorship. The joke "certainly was not" a reference to race, said a spokesman. So why take the episode off-air? Because, he said, "the BBC has no wish to upset any member of our audience". Even, it seems, when the audience is wrong. But broadcasters can't afford to be so craven. If they got rid of every programme about which a viewer complained, the schedules would be empty. The gossip website Holy Moly! compiles the most absurd complaints made by viewers. One recently attacked a children's programme for "showing Rottweilers in a bad light". It's these people, not the press, who are dictating the BBC's policy on jokes – people who think Rottweilers are cuddly and biscuits are racist. Imagine if the BBC had been so timid in the past. If it's unacceptable for Boyle to say Adlington resembles "someone looking at themselves in the back of a spoon", it would surely have been unacceptable in 1993 for Have I Got News for You to replace the absent Roy Hattersley with a tub of lard. That episode is among the show's most fondly remembered. Boyle's defence is that he was only giving Mock the Week's producers what they wanted; he says he'd rather have made jokes about serious subjects, but the executives insisted that he focus on celebrities. Frankly, I find this irrelevant – Boyle is the type of comedian who can cause offence on any subject, worthy or trivial. But broadcasters mustn't remove all risqué humour. They just have to make calmer decisions about what is and isn't offensive. There's a difference between making obscene telephone calls to a 79-year-old actor and suggesting a swimmer has a big nose. For decades, the BBC has had a reputation for creating comedy. If it carries on like this, it'll have a reputation for choking it.The BBC's censors risk killing off comedy
The corporation is setting its own taste dial – and it's right beside the panic button, says Michael Deacon.
Thursday, 29 October 2009
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