What the B.B.C. has done was, in the opinion of all right-thinking people, a gross violation of internationally accepted ethics of morality and respect which are always extended to foreign Heads of State and is deplorable. But is even more deplorable in the case of Archbishop Makarios who is not only the Head of a Commonwealth State but is, at the same time, the Head of the Cyprus Church.
In protesting most vigorously against this lack of courtesy shown to the President of the Cyprus Republic I would like to assure you, Sir, that programmes of this sort do not help to strengthen the good relations which so happily now exist between our two countries.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Yours faithfully,
High Commissioner
Sanderstead, Surrey
14 April 1963
To: The Governors, B.B.C. Television Service
Dear Sirs,
I wish to confirm my verbal protest given over the telephone to the duty officer about 10.30pm last night, when I informed him of my horror on hearing the blasphemous skit just portrayed by David Frost in ‘T.W.T.W.T.W.’ The words he spoke were conveyed in the pseudo serious nature of a religious narration and repeated the words of Sacred Scripture but in the place of Christ referred to Chief Enaharo and how the Elders consulted to do him to death. This is most distasteful to the Christian morals of this country. It is the worst episode I have witnessed in this weekly show of bad taste and complete disregard of moral principles. It is, furthermore, an inexcusable ridicule of Sacred Scripture and as such subject to the laws of this Christian Country which still permits legal action to be taken against the perpetrators of blasphemy. Is legal action through the courts necessary in order to make the B.B.C. realise that the Corporation is subject to the Christian morals of this country?
As to the episode on Saturday, will you state in clear terms that you apologise to the listening public for the offence occasioned against Christian Charity on this the Holiest of Christian Feasts?
Yours faithfully,
G.J.C.
London SW19
25 April 1963
To: Hugh Carleton Greene Esq. OBE, BBC, London W1
Dear Mr. Carleton Greene,
I do not think that a programme can be justified on the plea that it ‘was intended as a light-hearted one’ and that ‘there was no intention of attacking religious belief or belittling the religious significance of Easter.’
Just consider for a moment what the position would have been if a similar skit had been presented on, for instance, the Jewish Day of Atonement, to take a religious festival that is, I suppose, neither more nor less sacred to Jews than Easter is sacred to Christians. The programme would have been accused of being anti-semitic and would have been very properly objected to. But is there any reason why the feelings of Christian people in the Country (who are, after all, in a majority compared with any other religious body) should not receive at least equal consideration to that which would be extended in similar circumstances to other religious groups?
Yours sincerely,
C.B.
Bluntisham, Huntingdon
29 September 1963
Dear Sir,
I wish to say how much I and all my family appreciate the return of That Was the Week etc. It is a great comfort and reassurance to know that the BBC can still have the courage to screen programmes of honesty and intelligence in the present climate of moronic hypocrisy.
I am not a person who frequently writes to the newspapers or the BBC, but I feel that it is very important that the BBC should know when there are many, many viewers who approve strongly of this series, who are not so quick to put pen to paper as members of some well-known ‘pressure group’ organisations. I hope that TW3 has a long and successful life ahead.
Yours faithfully,
P.J.B.
Lyndewode Road, Cambridge
30 September 1963
Dear Sir,
My people feel, as I do, that there is a place for satire in literature and broadcasting, and we have been interested in, and challenged by, the genuine satire in the programme. We have enjoyed the ‘digs’ at those in high places, and the mocking of pomposity. ‘TW3’ was a great idea and a worthwhile experiment. But it seemed that the first series gradually deteriorated, in that genuine satire was replaced by dirty-mindedness.
We had all hoped that something would be done to alter this before the new series started. You can judge, therefore, how disappointed we were with last Saturday evening’s programme. The one genuine bit of satire was to the point – hurting, maybe – and certainly thought-provoking. For the rest, it was distressing to see the old familiar symptoms of adolescent dirty-mindedness reappearing, and – further – appalling bad taste in the photographic references to Dr. Stephen Ward and Mr. Profumo.
‘TW3’ is a programme which could be clever, as well as entertaining, and challenging too, with its frank comment on all facets of contemporary life. But this constant obsession with the dirty way of thinking of sex would seem to be yet another contribution to the lowering of moral standards.
Surely you can do better than this.
Yours sincerely,
(Rev.) A.B.
Colwyn Bay
3 October 1963
To: The Chairman, British Broadcasting Corporation, London W1
Dear Sir,
We watched with interest the return of TWTWTW to the air last Saturday night, in the hope that we might find it entertaining and perhaps instructive. In a Boarding School of some 400 teenage girls it is essential for the Staff to be ‘with it’. We were bitterly disappointed. The show was occasionally funny, sometimes clever, but generally in bad taste and iconoclastic to the verge of idiocy. It is very easy to smash up The Establishment by picking mortar out from between the bricks. It is not so easy to build up another form of government to put in its place.
Perhaps we are flattering the young producer by overestimating the effect it has on the minds of twelve million viewers. Many of these are under 20 and so prone to accept without reflection any aspersions cast on authority. (We should know.) Hypocrisy and cant are every intelligent person’s target, but they do not seem to us as dangerous as vandalism and nihilism.
A programme which started most successfully as ‘Beyond the Fringe’ has been inflated out of all proportion to its merits and now influences the political opinions and moral standards of perhaps a quarter of the youthful population of the country. It is high time it was taken off the air.
Yours faithfully,
C.S. Head Mistress
M. R. (Head of the French Department)
London SW1
14 October 1963
To: Donald Baverstock BBC Television Centre
Dear Mr Baverstock,
I have looked at one or two of the last ‘TWTWTW’ programmes and am perplexed by them. I have done my best, in the light of the controversy, to view them as impartially as possible, and I frankly dislike such points as, for example, the deliberate blasphemy of that item last Saturday about the Motor Show.
I viewed the programme the last two Saturdays with a quite representative party of six or eight people, mostly young – an art student, an English girl from South Africa, a young married woman who is a secretary, the manager of a West End theatre, a nurse, an author of children’s books and one or two others. All of them were unanimous in commenting on the amateurishness of the programme. Its extraordinarily poor quality gave the impression of haste in preparation, and inexperience in production. Then we read in the papers – whether accurately or not – that the Negro comedian gets £100 a week. Is it conceivable, if this figure is right, that what he gave on Saturday is worth £100?
Surely if this type of programme is to be put over, men and women with some mature experience of entertaining the public could be enlisted rather than these seemingly untrained amateurs who give the impression that they are trying to make up for their inexperience by their shock tactics.
Yours faithfully,
R.W.W
.
Britain’s Bible Magazine, Brighton
17 October 1963
To: the Director General BBC
Dear Sir,
I am sorry to have to write this letter, for many are the hours of pleasure I have received from the programmes of the BBC but it is impossible to let an item in last night’s ‘TW3’ go without making the strongest possible protest. It was the song Millicent Martin sang about contraception.
Recently an American comedian [Lenny Bruce] was refused permission to perform in this country on the grounds that he was a purveyor of ‘sick’ humour. I don’t know what ‘sick’ humour is, but I do know that last night’s song was sickening and that if that sort of thing continues we shall soon have a very sick society.
One has always looked to the B.B.C. for the maintenance of a good standard, but lately the use of objectionable language and questionable jokes has become increasingly frequent. If drunkenness, adultery and violence are practically the only occupations of the adult population, as our playwrights are at pains to inform us, then surely that is the very reason why you should try to raise the standard.
Yours truly,
J.W.
Great Sutton, Wirral
13 October 1963
To: The Director, B.B.C. Television, Shepherd’s Bush W12
Dear Sir,
Last month you were quoted on the B.B.C. sound news service as saying that the show ‘That was the week that was’ would continue through the Autumn, but ‘with the smut taken out’. The smut should never have been there in the first place.
How far your directions are being obeyed and observed will become apparent to you when you read the script of last night’s broadcast of the programme. It has altered not a jot since you gave your promise to the viewers a month ago. Take away the swearing, the sneering, the smearing and the lechery and all you will have is a drab negative little programme which is neither instructive nor entertaining.
There was a time when I felt a great pride in the B.B.C., and gratitude for its sense of responsibility and integrity. Under your direction the Television Service is showing little of either quality. May we please see some determined and constructive action on your part to set your house in order.
Yours faithfully,
E.B.W.L.
Amersham, Buckinghamshire
20 October 1963
To: Carlton Greene Esq., O.B.E., Director General, British Broadcasting Corporation, Langham Place, London W1
Dear Sir,
Both my wife and I are thoroughly disgusted with the appallingly vulgar, impertinent and vicious attack made on Lord Home last evening during the programme ‘This is the Week that Was’. [sic]
Indeed, the whole thing is quite beyond the standards one expects in a British Programme – the whole thing was quite stupid but the liberties taken last night are far too excessive.
How these people are allowed to get away with such vile and filthy attacks on personalities is quite beyond our comprehension and one can only hope that this time some definite action will be taken against the offenders.
I have sent copies of this letter to Mr. Ronald Bell, the member for South Bucks and also the Post Master General.
Yours faithfully,
D. K.
Sevenoaks, Kent
27 October 1963
To: Charles Curran, General Advisory Council, B.B.C. W1
Dear Mr. Curran,
After seeing last Saturday’s programme ‘That was the Week that was’ and reading your statement in today’s ‘Sunday Telegraph’, I simply cannot understand how you can say that this programme is now clean.
I enjoy humour and I am all for genuine satire, but I could only smile once during this programme. Several numbers, such as the ‘Virgins Anonymous’ song and the one by an apparently nude man and a girl in a bath, were simple incitement to promiscuity. A friend from France was with me and I must say I was deeply ashamed that this was the level of humour our national broadcasting corporation now offers. You must surely agree that this sort of thing is simply decadent and must strike other countries as in line with the worst they have thought about us after the Profumo Scandal.
As for the attack on the Church as ‘Big Business’, that was in the worst taste. It showed up the extreme Left Wing, atheist bias of the producers of this programme. Many reforms are needed in the Church, as I would be the first to admit, but I feel sure thousands of last night’s viewers must have been left with the same impression as I was: this was not a humorous tilting at what was wrong, but a planned attempt to split the people from the Church. The Church remains at least one repository of sound faith and moral backbone in the country. Without these, our culture will soon die, like a tree cut off at the roots. And even good humour goes out of the window, as it did last night.
Yours sincerely,
G. D.
London SE23
14 November 1963
To: The Board of Governors, B.B.C., Broadcasting House, W1
Dear Sirs,
As an ardent and devoted fan of B.B.C. Television, I write to protest most strongly at the decision to take off T.W.3 at the end of December, and particularly at the reason given. I am reasonably sure that absolutely no-one will believe that the fact that 1964 is [an] election year is the only reason why we are to be denied this form of comment. After all, this fact was known when the programme came back in September and if the election is delayed until late in the year we are being defrauded rather early.
I can’t honestly say I always enjoyed the programme, but with many others I felt that it helped to guard us in some way against pomposity and cynical exploitation from the top brass.
I sincerely hope that the Governors will relent, or at least will reassure us that this type of programme will return without any clipping of claws.
Yours sincerely,
(Miss) A. M. D.
Ashford, Kent
17 November 1963
Dear Sir,
It appears that the B.B.C. is swayed by individual pleas and the fact that there were 810 complaints after the ‘Disraeli speech’ in TW3 has been largely responsible for the sudden decision to discontinue the show. I wonder if you take into account the fact that it is human nature to complain more than to commend?
Anyway, I now see it as a duty as one of the MILLIONS who have not complained, to write and say how very disappointed we are that Saturday, the dreariest day of the B.B.C. week, is to lose its one bright spot and to beg you to reconsider. Why not start TW3 at mid-night?
If we had written before, it would have been with mixed feelings of delight and disgruntlement but above all of gratitude to the B.B.C. for providing something so vitally alive and kicking. Often it was too long, sometimes ‘ill-humoured’, only four of those taking part were worthy of their responsibilities, many of the ‘sketches’ were so feeble that they would have foundered even if performed by artists of a different calibre. (One would have liked to see Dora Brian [sic] Ron Moody, Alfred Marks, Michael Bentine, Bea Lillie etc. in TW3!)
Fumbled by the less effective members of the team, they [the sketches] could and did die several times over but there was always something in the programme that made it more worthwhile watching
There was, at first at any rate, an uninhibited lifting of the heavy lid of respectability from the Establishment dustbin. That this was being allowed by, of all bodies, the B.B.C. made one feel proud, for once, to be British. Surely making the show [start] earlier was a mistake and automatically produced more adverse criticism by bringing it under the noses of those who were ‘not ready for it’?
Yours faithfully,
J. E.
Oxted, Surrey
17 November 1963
Dear Sir,
TWTWTW last Saturday with its song on contraceptives, and the choir boy singing ‘now thank we all our God’ in connection with Courtaulds, was just about as dirty as dirt can go. Yours is a wise decision to have it off, but I thought this series to have been cleaned up. Whoever vets th
e programme must have been asleep on Saturday. I was surprised that the reason given for TWTWTW being discontinued was political, not moral. The criticisms were always of the lack of moral standards.
It’s good to see you continue with the favourites in entertainment:- Harry Worth, Perry Mason, The Lucy Show, and The Defenders. They have a standard.
Yours,
R. C.
St. Stephens House, Westminster SW1
25 November 1963
To: Director General British Broadcasting Corporation W1
Dear Mr Hugh Carleton Greene,
I am writing to you because I was so much impressed with the TW3 Programme last Saturday that I feel I must express my thanks and admiration to all concerned. I do not generally care for this programme although I sometimes find some of it amusing, but this was really outstanding.
It seems to me that no better means of expressing the feelings of the British people on the assassination of President Kennedy could be found than to offer this recording to the U.S. networks.
Yours sincerely,
Major General Sir Edward Spears K.B.E. M.C.
Telegram from:
East Bergholt Essex 8 December 1963
To: The Director General BBC London
SUPERB PERFORMANCE BY TWTWTW TONIGHT STOP SURELY YOU CANT SUPPRESS THIS BECAUSE OF THE WINDYNESS OF POLITICIANS IN AN ELECTION YEAR QUERY YOUR ADVISERY [sic] COUNCIL IS BIGGEST BODY OF SPOIL SPORTS IN COUNTRY STOP POLITICIANS PARTICULARLY IN ELECTION YEAR NEED GUIDANCE AS TO HOW TO ENTERTAIN PUBLIC STOP IF YOU PERSEVERE IN YOUR ABSURD DECISION YOU WILL BE DOING A NATIONAL DISSERVICE TO THE PUBLIC AND TO THE POLITICIANS = RANDOLPH CHURCHIL =
Brocket Hall, Welwyn, Herts.
29 December 1963
To: Sir Arthur fforde, Chairman, B.B.C. Langham Place W1
Dear Sir Arthur,
I am sorry to have to write to you again about T.W.3 but at any rate it will be the last time during this series. I trust it may be the last time ever.
Last night’s performance, which I hope you saw, excelled [exceeded?] even the previous performances in vulgarity and blasphemy.
Lady Brocket and I who are personal friends of Princess Alexandra and Mr. Angus Ogilvie, do not regard it as amusing when among other wedding presents it was stated that ‘Angus Ogilvie gave her a baby’. We are also not amused at a scene in which Millicent Martin appeared concerned with ‘fly buttons being undone.’
I'm Sure I Speak For Many Others... Page 11
