Mary Whitehouse Lives

It's good to see that ITV adhere so strictly to the 9 o'clock watershed as far as bad language is concerned.

As some of you may be aware, I fervently believe that The Beiderbecke Affair is at the very pinnacle of British TV (if not the world), and despite having watched it more times than I could possibly estimate, any repeat will have me sitting there, grinning like an idiot. We used to have regular Beiderbecke marathons and, although I didn't know the scripts verbatim, it wasn't far off. Sad but true.

Back to last night then. I was watching a repeat on ITV3 or ITV4 at 8 o'clock and noticed that when Trevor answered the crank call to the pay phone outside his flat, a few seconds had been chopped because he'd used the word 'b*gger' in the original. The same thing happened a few minutes later, when he repeated the offending word in a conversation with Mr. Wheeler, the headmaster. A less zealous viewer might not have noticed!

Fast forward an hour and switching to ITV1 for Ashes To Ashes. I'm not particularly interested in this show but it was on when I returned from my chores in the kitchen. Now swearing doesn't shock or offend me at all, I've even occasionally let myself down by using cuss words, but I was a little surprised that the first thing I heard was one of the category 'A' swearwords that many people really don't like. In fact, it was the one beginning with 't' and being an anagram of the unit of electrical power!

Just thought you should know.

To see the, if you'll excuse the expression, unb*stardised version of Trevor's reply to the silent nuisance caller, treat yourself to the complete trilogy on DVD. I know I've recommended this before but you'll be glad you did. And if you're watching Ashes to Ashes with anyone who has delicate sensibilities, cover their ears!