Obscenity on British TV

[Chris Waigl]

Michael Quinion wrote:

>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
>
>
>
To clarify, my comment was about avoiding to write the actual word
/fuck/, but then putting quotation marks around it, as if what was
inside the quotation marks represented what he actually said. (This is
what I meant by wrongly ordered parentheses. If they absolutely insist
on using the asterisks of avoidance on the BBC mini-site, shouldn't they
find a different typographical way to marks the expletive as words that
are mentioned, not used?)

Chris Waigl


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