You won’t believe what the hyper-woke BBC has done now – a source speaking to The Sun called it “the corporation’s most embarrassing decision yet”. Drum roll please, the move was… pulling an episode of The Repair Shop because of sexist Bob Monkhouse jokes! Will their tyranny ever cease?
Astute readers might have picked up a little sarcasm in my introductory paragraph, because while I’m as sensitive to overzealous censorship as anyone, a production company (in this case, Ricochet) making decisions about which segment of a family TV show to air based on what might offend viewers is surely the least we should ask of them.
Nonetheless, the decision to drop Monkhouse, who died in 2003, from the episode has caused predictable uproar. Apparently, it’s pathetic to be so easily offended, at least according to detractors throwing tantrums in defence of sexist jokes they haven’t even heard.
The gags in question were reportedly glimpsed by a crew member in the pages of one of Monkhouse’s joke books, which was brought in for restoration by his writing partner Colin Edmonds and adopted daughter Abigail Williams. That we don’t know the specifics of the jokes makes it easy for both sides of the debate to fill in the blanks.
But while those crying wokery are presumably imagining something unfashionable but ultimately good-natured, the fact that the books date back to the 1960s means it’s hardly a stretch to think that they might contain jokes starkly out of step with today’s sensibilities – especially when it comes to gender politics.
After all, it wasn’t until 1975 that women in the UK were allowed to open a bank account without the signature of a male relative; women could be refused service at a bar until 1982; shockingly, marital rape was only criminalised in 1991.
Good comedy reflects the world it’s born into, and that world has changed a lot since Monkhouse penned most of his material. That’s not to say that we ought to ban it – on the contrary, such cultural artefacts tell us about where we came from, even (or especially) when intervening years have made them controversial. But the time for examining them is not 8pm on a Wednesday night, during a show concocted to entertain both nana and her 10-year-old granddaughter.
The idea that having done something in the past makes it OK in the present might be persistent, but it’s one of our dimmest: after all, we used to burn witches at the stake, hit children, wear leggings as trousers – thankfully, all are consigned to history, or at least steep social disapproval. Even Edmonds would seem to agree. “They are of their time,” he said previously, of his partner’s joke books. “There are things that were acceptable in the 70s which one wouldn’t dream of saying today.” Quite.
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