Obscenity on British TV

[Michael Quinion]

Chris Waigl wrote:

> I'm more intrigued by the quotation marks. Presumably, Ken Tynan
> didn't use "f***" in 1965. That looks like wrongly ordered parentheses.
> And what happened to the practice of only asterisking the vowels?

Famously, Ken Tynan did say "fuck" live on BBC television, on 13 November
1965, during a discussion on a fairly dreadful satirical programme called
"BBC3" (the second channel, BBC2, had recently opened). What he actually
said was "I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word 'fuck'
would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden." It was
the first time it had been said on the air and it caused considerable
controversy. See, for example,

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,844116,00.html


--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org