Obscenity on British TV

[Jonathon Green]

Chris Waigl wrote:

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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Chris Waigl <cwaigl at FREE.FR>
>Subject:      Re: Obscenity on British TV
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>Jonathan Lighter wrote:
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>>Asterixes ?  ASTERIXES ? ? ? ?
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>>What's next, "the _Iliad_ by Homer Simpson" ? ? ? ?
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>>I am not just flabbergasted; I am obfusticated !
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>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?
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>Chris Waigl
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When it comes to such subsections of the vocabulary, the BBC is an
essentially gutless institution. Among the many popular fears from which
its runs in terror is so-called 'obscenity' As one who is constantly
called upon to deliver my supposedly relevant dicta whenever a
pol./sportsman/celeb./whatever uses such language in public, I am
invariably requested long before my opinions are cavassed, 'Now, you
won't actually _say_ any of these words on air, will you?' (I believe
this is in aid of some notional child whose tender ears might be
shocked.Unlikely, but then the BBC lives in its own world.). The
response to my asking, 'In that case why ask me to comment?' is
invariably met with a nervous giggle. And of course Tynan didn't say
f***; as I recall he asked whether any intelligent person could really
any longer take exception to the word being used, and duly used it.
There followed a furore. Nothing, btw, has changed. My latest summons
was to comment on Prince Harry's use of the word 'arse'.

JG