Bad Show, Goons

Page 21 of the Sunday People, Sunday 16th January 1983:

TV SEX SHOCKER BANNED
By TONY BASSETT

THE final episode of TV's controversial The Comic Strip series has been scrapped because, it was claimed, it was too shocking even for Channel 4.

Actor Alan Pellay, who was to have appeared in the episode, said: "The Channel 4 bosses have banned it because they thought it had too much violence and sex."

The episode, called Back to Normal with Eddie Monsoon, was about a freewheeling, alcoholic TV interviewer.

Mr. Pellay, an ex-drag artist, said: "It had homosexuals in it and the language was terrible."

Main star of the Monday night comedy series is Rik Mayall, of the recent BBC series The Young Ones, but he was not in the scrapped episode.

The show's executive producer, Michael White, said the final show was dropped after a joint decision along with Channel 4 executives.

"One reason was that there was a disagreement over the script and secondly it was very over-the-top," he said.

A spokeswoman for Channel 4 denied that the scrapping was a clean-up ruling.

Page 17 of the Daily Mirror, Monday 31st January 1983:

COMIC CUT
Channel 4 chat show gets chop
by TONY PRATT

* THE shock-horror tactics of Britain's liveliest new television team, The Comic Strip, have begun to worry even their broad-minded bosses at Channel 4.

The team decided to drop an episode from their current series which ends tonight with SUMMER SCHOOL (Channel 4, 9.0).

The group had planned a show called The Eddie Monsoon Chat Show. But Channel 4 executives frowned when they saw the script.

A member of the team, Dawn French, said: "It wasn't dirty but it was very abrasive. We didn't want to change it, so rather than argue at this stage we decided to hold it over and try again for our next series."

Dawn was the memorable fat girl, George, in the first Comic Strip show fro Channel 4, Five Go Mad In Dorset.

She stars in and has also written tonight's show which she calls an expose of a university course in Iron Age living.

From the Birmingham Mail, Tuesday 1st February 1983:

Viewers rap 'Comic Strip'

Angry viewers rang Channel Four last night complaining about a "disgusting" comedy starring Droitwich celebrity Rik Mayall.

The viewers were outraged by the last programme in the Comic Strip series, a satire on students attempting an Iron Age expedition.

They were upset by scenes of woad-covered students mistakenly burning one of their colleagues alive.

Others could not take the prominence of a large statue, described by programme-makers as a "silly fertility symbol."

Rik Mayall played Tarquin. He created the character of an imbecilic TV Brummie, Kevin Turvey.

A Comic Strip spokesman said the programme was "a send-up of middle-class intellectual trendies."

She added: "It was a joke. I cannot imagine why people should object. There was nothing in the programme that we have not seen on screen before."

Channel Four said: "Most people thought the programme was very funny."

From The Daily Mirror, Wednesday 17th October 1973:

'Billy Liar' TV show is censored
By KEN IRWIN

A NEW TV comedy show has been censored by ITV chiefs - because, they claim, there is too much swearing.

The first programme in the series, "Billy Liar" - based on the hit novel and film - has been altered for its screening next week.

And the rest of the series will be shown at 8.30pm, an hour later than planned. Mr. Cyril Bennett, London Weekend TV's programme chief, said yesterday: "The IBA decided that the word 'bloody' was used too much for early evening viewing."

One of the show's writers, Keith Waterhouse, said of the ruling: "As far as I am concerned, it's bloody stupid."

From The Guardian, Wednesday 17th October 1973:

But unbowed

THE BILLY LIAR series which began on Friday on London Weekend Television is to be put back an hour to 8 30 p.m., because of objections by the Independent Broadcasting Authority to the number of bloodies uttered by Billy's dad, played by George Cooper. But the first episode will go out at the original time: it contains only 15 bloodies, fewer than the other 12 episodes.

 From The Sun, Wednesday 17th October 1973:

Oops! Rude Billy Liar Upsets The TV Bosses
By Brian Wesley

BILLY LIAR has run into a TV storm. Not because of his fantasy fibs, but over a six-letter swear word.

The offending word, used in a big London Weekend comedy production about the North Country character is BLOODY.

Officials of the Independent Broadcasting Authority - the ITV watchdog body - objected.

They said the word was used far to often in the new series.

So the 13 half-hour episodes have had to be "drastically rejigged."

Actor George A. Cooper, who plays Billy's father, said yesterday: "There is constant swearing, it is true. But this decision is very silly.

Attack

Series co-writer Keith Waterhouse was stronger in his attack: "I am indignant," he said.

"There is nothing in the Billy Liar series that my 10-year-old son would not know."

Now, when the series begins on October 26 at 7.30pm, it will be with an episode originally planned for a month later.

After that "innocuous" episode, Billy Liar will go out an hour later - at 8.30pm.

From Cinema TV Today, Saturday 20th October 1973:

The IBA has allowed the first of the new London Weekend's comedy series "Billy Liar" to go out as planned at 7.30p.m. but, having seen four completed episodes and several advance scripts the IBA has decided that future editions must be networked at what Cyril Bennett describes as "the more sanitary time of 8.30."

From Evening News, Thursday 14th November 1974:

One Word I Could Do Without

WHEN the first series of Billy Liar appeared I was highly critical of the use of the word "bloody."

It was used 30 to 40 times each show.

As the shows were all pre-recorded before the first one went on the air, there was not much the producers could do short of taking the show off.

The campaign had its effect and in the second series the word was eliminated.

Stupid

However, Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, two of the top script writers in the country, obviously cannot visualise the character of Billy's father as being able to complete a sentence without a massive use of expletives.

They therefore created their own swear word. The word is "swine-ing." Everything is swine-ing this and swine-ing that.

Apart from its idiocy, this one word has made an unfunny show into an irritating one.

From Punch, Wednesday 4th June 1980:

Not Behind The News
Producer JOHN LLOYD on how the programme comes together

IT'S NOT easy to be arrogant about winning a Silver Rose when you've been beaten into second place by an ice-skating Mountie. But it's hard to be cool too.

To work on Not The Nine O'Clock News is to live dangerously. The Production Office is a perilous hopscotch across the screaming main road which separates it from the BBC TV Centre itself, over the Tube station and under the shiny green juggernauts which burst without warning out of the Marks and Spencers cardie factory next door. To avoid becoming an "incident" on the line, is to run the embarrassing risk of being crushed to death by seven tons of pantie-hose.

It is this office, part of an unpainted warehouse once owned by Keith Joeseph, but since dubbed "The Book Depository" because of its excellent sniping opportunities vis-à-vis the Corporation Brass Hats on the sixth floor of the Centre, that the actors must try to reach.

At about 10.15 am, Pamela Stephenson, fresh as an advertisement, puts her head round the office door. That head. Cornflower eyes and cornfield hair, teeth shining like a Mahjong set before the squiggles have been painted on.

Any girlish illusions she may have once entertained about TV producers being alert young Turks in toffee-coloured sports-coats, plump ties and expensive Italian shoes with Elastoplast-sized pieces of schoolgirls belt under the gold buckles, have long since faded. She sees only Sean Hardie trying with painful deliberation to clear a plot on the rubble above his desk where the typewriter can crouch at a decent angle.

Men have moved faster through vats of sago. Later, much later, he will unearth a telephone he never knew he had. The man looks like an Easter Island Statue with a penchant for overstaying its welcome at stag nights. He doesn't have crows' feet, he has ravines.

On the other side of the office, part way beneath approx. 4cwt. of elderly Daily Mirrors, sits Lloyd, balefully eyeing a rubber crocodile. His eyes are a brace of peeled tomatoes that look as if someone takes them for cheese-rolling contests.

Before going to outside rehearsal, we have a job to do. The Government will not install a zebra crossing on any given bit of road until nine people have been knocked down on it. An official BBC memo has therefore come round informing All Staff that they are required to cross Wood Lane at every possible opportunity, in case an inspector should pass by and see how dangerous it is.

On the way to do so, Griff Rhys Jones is discovered in the car park, a fistful of cheese sandwich, reading a Robert Louis Stevenson novel with one eye, and a sheaf of morgue gags he was given by a man in a pub with the other.

Lollipop-duty completed (once is plenty, as that takes a good twenty minutes) we move off to the Rehearsal Rooms in a rambling Community Centre in Wormwood Scrubs. Director Bill Wilson, who has five children and is used to getting no sleep, is at the wheel. The Peugeot is so quiet, the only sound is of Sean Hardie breaking a tooth on a BBC egg roll.

The Community Centre is all peeling doors, disinfectant and maliciously placed Tonka Toys. In a room off the entrance hall, Mel Smith had found six dozen old ladies having a dancing lesson. In the midst of a herd of these miniscule, bespectacled creatures, stands this cheerful, paunchy giant looking like one of Mabel Lucie Atwell's nightmares. Mel gives a tiny wave. The Lilliputian hoofers wave back. He waves again. They wave and squeak. The game can be played for hours with no lessening of delight on either side.

Likewise the pinball machine, at which Rowan Atkinson, he whose face is made of material originally developed for the Apollo Moonshot programme, is hunched.

Charlie, the ancient Brummie caretaker, is already preparing the first seventeen coffees of the day - the beginning of a sort of eczema of plastic cups, makeshift ashtrays, gnawed felt - tips and scraps of paper with vital phone numbers on, which follows the production wherever it goes. Pamela opens the battered canvas suitcase she uses as a wallet, and silently hands a single Lapsang Souchong teabag to Charlie.

Rehearsals are democratic anarchy. A portable typewriter clacks spasmodically. The Space Invaders machine ptoinks. Mournful-looking writers arrive clasping Sealink bags full of lavatory jokes. All through the day the swing doors bash open to admit little parties of sobbing make-up and costume designers begging for decisions. Rehearsals are adjusted accordingly.

Rowan had to lie of the floor for 25 minutes while Kezia the make-up lady improbably covers his face in something resembling cottage cheese to make a gorilla mask for him.

Even at rehearsals the phone rings incessantly.

"This is the British Plastic Baths Association. Our baths do not make your bum squeak when you sit in them."

"No, ex-President Nixon would not like to come and plug his book on your programme."

"We've got a plastic alligator, a Bakelite rhinoceros, a mechanical cow with three legs or a stuffed marlin. Which do you want?"

"Hallo. This is the Welsh Socialist Republican Party. Like your joke 'Come Home To A Real Fire... Buy a Cottage in Wales.' We're sending you some badges reading, 'Strike a Light For Wales'."

It's Saturday lunchtime, and we still have three sketches to write. Still, looks like being a good edition. Think there might just be time to nip out and get a toffee-coloured sports-coat after all.

This is the second oldest comedy article in the ITC clippings catalogue. See if you can guess which comedians the writer is talking about before he names them. The last paragraph is unrelated but interesting, and so left in. From Reynolds News, Sunday 2nd June 1957:

These smutty gags make me WRITHE
TV by FRED COOKE

ENCOURAGED by the sniggers of studio audiences, some comedians are forgetting that TV is strictly a family entertainment.

They appear to be having difficulty in distinguishing between the drawing-room audience of TV and the music hall audience, which knows what to expect - and usually gets it.

It's always the unscripted incident which throws up the double entendre and wins leers.

These drop like over-ripe fruit from give-away programmes like CTV's Bury Your Hatchet, the Beat The Clock interlude in the Palladium Sunday show and My Wildest Dream;

Programmes in which married couples - sometimes honeymooners are prepared to suffer any indignity in pursuit of a washing machine or a shower of pound notes.

Yes, it's Bob Monkhouse and Tommy Trinder I'm getting at.

SHAME

They are among TV's wittiest. But give them a married couple to gag with and they become TV's smuttiest, picking words harmless enough on the face, but all with suggested second-meanings.

I writhed with shame the other night at this idea of clean family fun. I'm not a prude but a mixed young audience were watching with me.

The line, "Would you like to do this with me?" is always good for an unhealthy guffaw in My Wildest Dream.

A recent reference to the Brides in the Bath had enough leer-potential to keep Tommy Trinder gagging in the lower register all night.

In a different category of tastelessness was the conjecture as to whether or not it was a woman's "wildest dream" to live with David Nixon - who has recently lost his wife.

The incident came over on my screen as one of TV's more embarrassing moments.

It's no excuse that these challengers are willing victims. Their behaviour is only one category above those barrelled indignity on Blackpool's gawping mile.

The drawing room audiences NOT willing.

The BBC, who have had to answer for plenty of blue streaks in their programmes in the past, have made it quite clear to their artists that both TV and radio sets are for families.

FRIGHTENED

The Independent Television Authority, which would never approve of a suggestive script, should be equally tough with comics who have been getting away with the gag-first-think-afterwards type of humour.

*

Michael Barnsley, ex-editor of Panorama, and current producer of ITN's Roving Report, is one of TV's frightened men.

He says in Behind The Screen (Andre Deutsch, 15s.): "TV can inspire, incite, encourage, enrapture - and, by contrast, hypnotise into a full awareness.

"These things are known to those of us engaged in the medium and it's not surprising that the knowledge sometimes frightens the living daylights out of us."

Hello everyone, and welcome to a new weblog entirely devoted to reproducing newspaper clippings about British comedy programmes.

The ITC have been saving press clippings about all aspects of television since the mid-fifties, catagorising them into folders by channel, genre, complaints, etc. They have recently scanned all their clippings up to 2001 onto CD-roms and sold them to research libraries. The CD-roms have no search feature, unfortunately, so if one is, for example, researching a particular comedy show one has to browse through every clipping in the 'Comedy' folders from 1955 to 2001.

In February 2007 this is exactly what I did. I found seven articles relating to what I researching, and around five-hundred others of interest. Not wanting to lose them I printed the majority out, and intend to type the most interesting ones up on this weblog.

The intention with this weblog is not to rewrite history, or to preach about the mistakes of comics of the past, or to identify which articles are clearly fabrications of bored journalists. The articles will be reproduced as they were originally printed, leaving the reader to make up their own minds about its content. If I write anything at all accompanying the pieces it'll be a simple explanatory paragraph.

The title of this weblog comes from the earliest article held in the ITC's clipping catalogue, from Empire News, Sunday 4th March 1956:

JOHN GAY'S TELETOPICS
Bad show, Goons

* THE GOONS are in trouble. The people at the B.B.C. who have carefully nurtured their crazy lunacy since it was a slightly twisted little squib are annoyed - and justifiably so, in my opinion, over the first ITV edition of "Idiot's Weekly," which featured two of the Goons, Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers.

They are annoyed on two counts - first that characters which they built up on sound radio, like Eccles and Bluebottle, should be used on the rival programme, and secondly that Milligan and Sellers should have appeared "in camera" before the television camera.

Deplored

Eccles and Bluebottle both have a tremendous following, and for them to appear "live," say the B.B.C., destroys the mental picture thousands of listeners have built of them.

B.B.C. Goon Show producer Pat Dixon told me: "It may have been only a minute, but the damage was done. I deplore any attempt to destroy the illusion the Goons have built up in listeners' minds, and I am astonished that people like Sellers and Milligan, with their performing skill and artistic integrity and knowledge of the business, should fall into such an error."

Mistake

At The Goonery, off Shepherd's Bush Green, I found a couple of head-hanging Goons, and Spike admitted to me that it was a great mistake. "It wasn't me idea," he said. "I was all against making the characters visual. We've always left them to the listeners' imagination, but I was asked to do a piece quickly on film and - well, viewers saw me in my Goon part as Eccles. There was Peter Sellers as Bluebottle, too, but heavily camouflaged."

A contrite Spike Milligan concluded: "We'll try not to let it happen again. We'll create a new set of idiots."

As a final note on this article, a friend of mine was looking through the 1956 equivalent of TV Times and discovered that in this show's slot were the words "The Goon Show". These words were crossed out and replaced with "Idiot's Weekly". Presumably the BBC had refused the use of the title, long before they refused the I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue team when they tried to tour with a show of that name this year.