I'm Sure I Speak For Many Others...
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Yours sincerely,
Fisher of Lambeth
London NW10
4 January 1965
Dear Mr. Frost,
I write this letter as a devotee of ‘Not So Much a Programme’ and as a humble PC of the Metropolitan Police. Being a policeman necessarily means missing a fair number of your programmes but this is just one of the many crosses we have to bear in common with Miss [novelist and critic Brigid] Brophy’s careless remarks on Sunday.
Miss Brophy represents a fair cross-section of the populace with whom the police unfortunately have to deal all year round – stupidity, ignorance, resentment, malice and downright hatred are part and parcel of every policeman’s working day.
Being on one’s feet for 12 or 14 hours (on C.N.D. demonstrations) and then being pushed around by long haired loud-mouths is hardly likely to improve one’s demeanour. Although the general prescription these days is that the policeman is a mindless moron with a truncheon for smashing heads in, boots for fracturing ribs and a tongue for the purposes of committing perjury, I am an apparent exception.
I loathe the use of violence and could not in all conscience remain in an organisation that encouraged or permitted the use of it. Your film, showing Negroes kicked whilst bound and helpless, sickened me. We (myself and other officers) do however enjoy Mr. Rushton’s antics. Good luck to him. No one could take him seriously.
Miss Brophy’s little saga on the [arrested] 70 year old woman broke my callous heart. Salty tears dripped into the pint of Beatnik’s blood I customarily drink before retiring for the night. In this big, big heart of mine I always find room to forgive eccentrics like Miss Brophy.
Yours sincerely,
J. M.
Edinburgh
19 January 1965
To: Ned Sherrin Esq. Producer and Director, BBC, London
Dear Sir,
The lack of a ‘normal’ woman in your programme seems inexcusable in this day of well-educated and well spoken women.
The rather curious specimens whom you have so far presented on rare occasions make this female viewer uncomfortable, for they either dress, think and speak oddly or/and have a negligible contribution to make to the discussion.
Admittedly, the male members of the speaking panel are often trite, though that may be the fault of the questions and Mr Frost but I simply refuse to believe that there are no intelligent, gracious women able and willing to enhance the existing male, cigarette/cigar smoking, all but shirt-sleeved panel of ‘visitors’.
Yours faithfully,
M. E. M. (Miss)
Skegness Lincolnshire
2 February 1965
Dear Sirs,
Not so much a programme, more a way of life
With reference to the remark made in your programme of January 31st.
If Mr. Mossman implied that Skegness is not bracing, evidentially he does not know what he is talking about. Perhaps he has never sampled the air of Skegness, and we take this opportunity of inviting him to our resort.
Our slogan is not misleading, and means exactly what it says. It has been scientifically proved that the nature of the air on this stretch of coast is bracing.
Yours faithfully,
H.L.C.
Skegness Hoteliers Association.
London SW8
26 February 1965
To: Programme Department BBC Television Centre Wood Lane W.12
Dear Sirs,
Just for the record – here is one viewer who considers ‘Not So Much …’ is the only ‘adult entertainment’ programme the BBC offers at the present time. Half its attraction is the fact that it runs three nights each week, and if the BBC kills this programme I, for one, will be very cross.
Yours faithfully,
J. B.
Liverpool 18
28 February 1965
Dear Sir,
I watched your programme last Saturday night and was completely sickened by the sketch you showed of the Irish woman and the priest.
I did not find the general vulgarity of the setting amusing. Why did you show the priest taking the money? I thought you were trying to hit at the Church’s attitude to Birth Control. Obviously you couldn’t resist other malicious jabs in the process.
The discussion about another baby was absolutely revolting; both this and the discussion of the methods of Birth Control could never take place. Perhaps worst of all were the inferences made e.g. the priest’s support of the drunken husband.
I grew to dislike the woman – Dee something – [newspaper columnist and broadcaster Dee Wells] who wouldn’t allow Norman St. John Stevas to defend his church’s attitude which had just been attacked. I wonder why the audience clapped when she called him ‘a silly man’. She reminded me of the female astrologer who once squirted a lemon at Bernard Levin on TW.
I don’t think I shall watch your programme again.
Yours sincerely,
Anon
Liverpool 19
1 March 1965
To: BBC, Broadcasting House London
Dear Sir,
As an erstwhile Catholic who saw the sketch on Saturday night and also enjoyed Miss Dee Wells’ valuable contribution to the later discussion, I am amazed at the reaction of Mr. Simon Mahon and his fellow M.P.s.
Just after the First World War, I collected rents in the Dockland area of Liverpool, and saw the misery and suffering caused by un-employment to the men and women with large families. It was common practice for one ‘affluent’ family, invariably with several bullies of sons, to pay the rent of say five or six houses and charge interest of twopence in the shilling. To obtain the loan a ‘compulsory’ purchase of one shilling’s worth of ‘not so fresh fish’ was made. This ‘Protection’ racket was a Godsend to the victims, in as much as it kept a roof over their heads. The moneylenders were nearly always ‘Pillars of the Church’. I never heard of the Church taking part in a Public Outcry against the deplorable conditions lived in by the people. One day a woman told me she had no rent, no bread in the house and only one penny. The priest called whilst I was there and she handed him the penny – and he took it!
In my Mother’s day the wages of Dockland were paid out in the Public houses and it was usual to see children waiting outside for the miserable pittances to take home to their mothers before the brewers got the lot. Small blame on the men but large blame on the Church who fought hard against the working class and Socialism (the Anti-Christ). The Labour Party grew in Liverpool from the struggle of Dockland [and] made the safe seats for those M.P.s who are now ashamed of its source.
Yours faithfully,
M. F. M. (Mrs.)
Liverpool 14
2 March 1965
To: Mr. Huw Wheldon, Controller of Television Programmes BBC Shepherd’s Bush London W12
Dear Sir,
I have long grown accustomed to the barrage of wholesale dishonesty, cowardly insinuation, and unadulterated filth which emanated from producers and ‘artists’ of B.B.C. television programmes. However, the cesspool of mental and moral degradation from which ideas for many of your programmes are drawn can rarely have vomited such a nauseating, disgusting, offensive and insulting piece of shameful and insolent effrontery as the ‘Birth Control’ sketch last Saturday night. Clearly, the much vaunted B.B.C. is riddled with the cancer of iniquity, and needs to be purged of some very corrupt and feeble-minded fools.
I am a Catholic who worked for the first seven years (1956–63) in St Joseph’s Parish Liverpool. Some of the scoundrels harboured by your institution would have benefitted from being brought up in a Liverpool ‘slum’. Their arrogance, pomposity and fabricated claptrap would have been strangled long before they had a chance to become the arch-contaminators of the nation, paraded on our screens by a conceited and quite un-British Broadcasting Corporation.
With utter contempt for the instigators of this shabby, pitiful and despicable episode,
I am, Sir,
Yours faithfully,
Rev. L. J. M.
2 March 1965
To: The Director General BBC Television Programmes Not So Much A Programme, More a Way of Life
Dear Sir,
I have read a report on the front page of the ‘Daily Mail’ of to-day’s date to the effect that you are likely, at the instigation of three Members of Parliament (two Labourites and one Tory), to be asked to apologise publicly for some highly topical, and highly truthful, allusions to certain practices of the Church of Rome which received attention (and not before time) in last Saturday’s programme.
May I congratulate you on this much needed publicity? May I also express the hope that you will apologise for nothing, and that you will adhere to the good old War-Cry of ‘No Surrender’? It would be a very sad day that you were compelled to restrict your programmes to what is acceptable to the Pope’s Brass Band.
Yours very truly
W.M.E.A.
copy to Mr. Simon Mahon MP House of Commons
Liverpool & District Catholic Young Men’s Society Amateur Football League Under the Patronage of His Grace the Archbishop of Liverpool
3 March 1965
Dear Sir,
At the Monthly General Meeting of the above League, held at St. Francis Xavier’s Men’s Club on Monday last, under the item Other Business, the following resolution was passed, with acclamation.
‘We, the members of the Liverpool & District C.Y.M.S. Amateur Football League, wish to protest in the strongest possible terms concerning the slanderous and disgusting sketch which defiled the BBC Programme & Television Service, in the series, ‘Not so much a Programme, More a way of Life’. It casts an unwarranted slur on the Catholic people of Liverpool and Merseyside and on the English and Irish Clergy who dedicate themselves to the service of the Community in the area. We feel that a very full apology should be made and an assurance that such programmes will not be repeated.’
B.E.J.
Coventry
4 March 1965
Dear Sirs,
We were thoroughly disgusted to read that Sir Hugh Greene apologised to the M.P.’s concerned due to the Catholic sketch in ‘N.S.M.a P’.
The M.P.’s have no right what-so-ever to ask for an apology as they either objected to the sketch on the grounds of being a Catholic or are afraid of losing votes as Liverpool has so many Catholics in its community. On both counts this is no reason for demanding apologies.
This month we shall have our second child and do not wish to have anymore due to the world population crisis. Why should our children’s children be starving just to support people who are frightened of a stupid religious belief?
Yours faithfully,
J. E. H. (Mrs.)
Rhos-on-Sea, Colwyn Bay
5 March 1965
Dear Mr. Frost,
I am glad that you are not backing down to Lord Longford and the rest of the idiots who are asking for a public apology – the R.C. sketch last weekend, because it was absolutely ‘spot on’.
I have actually been present when this has happened and the RC priest accepted quite a large sum (it looked like £20) from a chap who was able to eke out a precarious living in a café in Colwyn Bay.
I also saw the mother of a large family, whose husband was a labourer at the Lancashire Steel Corporation give the RC priest a £1 note and he accepted it with ill grace. It made me realise what a phoney religion this is. ‘I reckon all RCs are either ‘nutcases’ or making money out of it.
[Please] turn off the sound from your vocals, your songs are bloody awful. Why not have a good tenor (British) singing ‘My Dreams’? I am sure your audience would be thrilled to bits.
Best of good wishes,
Yours sincerely,
E. J.
Brechin, Angus
5 March 1965
To: David Frost Esq., B.B.C., London W1
Dear Mr.Frost
R.C. Birth Control Sketch
Let me start by saying how much I enjoy your programme & that I was among those many who felt almost that they had lost a blowsy old friend when dear & vulgar, but nonetheless thought-provoking and funny TW3 went off the air. However Not So Much a Programme promises to be even better: this mainly because the other side is given a fair crack of the whip. This is among the few programmes which we ever find it worthwhile to watch.
Having said all this, it is remarkable having the discernment which is yours, how the show can go off the rails; this particularly in the case of the above sketch. I can assure you that those who protest are by no means ‘a minority of a minority’. On birth control I could not disagree more fundamentally than I do with the present attitude of the R.C. Church.
Ridiculing the opposition so savagely has the reverse effect of what is intended. It was far off the mark in its picture of the RC priest taking so much money from a poor family. One dispenses everything from bunches of spring flowers to the odd bottle of sherry to brighten the lives of those who live alone in single rooms. We refuse daily to take subscriptions or to ask for expenses incurred from those who cannot afford them. I am sorry to sound like a schoolmaster but anything so bold is bound to drop the odd clanger from time to time. Only having done so, it might be as well to admit it.
With best wishes,
(Rev.) L.J.A.B.
P.S. We miss Eleanor Bron
Great Ormsby, Norfolk
6 March 1965
Sir,
Could I say how much I laughed at the sketch about the Catholic priest and the mother with a regiment of children, Sat 27th February. I can’t understand what all the fuss is about from such men as Lord Longford. Maybe if he had his way we would be back to the gloomy Sundays of my boyhood days. I am now 65. I liked your spirited reply, Daily Mail, March 5th and please, let’s have a bit more of this sort of thing.
Sincerely,
D.B.M.C. (Mrs.)
11 March 1965
To: The Director of the BBC
I should think you might apologise for the silliest, most repulsive, filthiest and depraved skit I have ever seen during my life on this earth. Have sensible discussions about birth control by all means (and other controversial topics) but only discussions. To preface a talk on such a subject with a filthy skit indicates something wrong at the top with the BBC. We have to pay our licences, so I should think we might have some say in the programmes – or do we have to pander to some pathetic desire to be bold, modern, and ‘with it’?
‘Not so much’ is only looked at by me as I love the brilliance of John Bird – the rest of it is largely tripe – and that nightmare song!
yours,
R. B.
Stockport, Cheshire
12 March 1965
Dear Mr. Frost,
This is not a fan letter but a serious query arising out of a discussion which I had with a friend recently. We are sixth-formers and have watched both ‘That Was the Week That Was’ and ‘Not so much a programme, more a way of life’ regularly. TW3 was at times destructive but we feel ‘Not so much a programme’ achieved a higher standard and does have something more constructive to offer.
In discussing this we began to examine what we considered the motive for satire ought to be and more particularly, what your own personal motives were. We decided that you were either a rebel, an idealist or have a gigantic chip on your shoulder and enjoy making trouble. Otherwise you simply have a vicious nature or are in it for the money.
Yours sincerely,
M. L.
Prittlewell, Essex
26 March 1965 11.30 p.m.
To: Mr. David Frost, B.B.C.
It is impossible for me to go to bed without protesting about the unwarranted attack by Bernard Levin on Sir Alex [sic] Douglas Home, who is a man of integrity and culture and would never be guilty of such a breach of good taste.
Ten minutes before he was indulging in a diatribe against [the] privilege of free speech in the House of Commons. I assume that he considers Bernard Levin – being a superior being, not subject to ordinary laws – m
ay be allowed the privilege of publicly insulting anybody. Big congratulations and thanks to Paddy who restored ordinary logic and civility to the programme.
P.B.H.
London W6
28 March 1965
For the attention of Sir Hugh Carleton-Greene
Dear Sir,
I write to confirm a telephone call I had with your Duty Officer at 2345 hours on Friday night. Some years ago I had occasion to write to you when systematically and deliberately, TW3 set out to destroy the public image of Mr Macmillan, a show with which Ned Sherrin and David Frost were associated. In this they succeeded and at the time I believe I used the words ‘character assassination.’ As soon as Mr Macmillan disappeared the target of the attack switched to Sir Alec Douglas Home.
On Friday we were treated to an attack on privilege in parliament by Bernard Levin who gratuitously introduced into the conversation the fact that Sir Alec Douglas Home was ‘a cretin’. When challenged by [Irish journalist, humourist and later panel captain on Call My Bluff] Patrick Campbell, there was no withdrawal by Levin.
The BBC provides a platform night after night for public attacks on the character, mental strength and integrity of Sir Alec Douglas Home. By refusing to act when I last wrote to you, you allowed TW3 to destroy Macmillan. My letter received a formal acknowledgement but although my letter was addressed to you, you did not have either the grace or the courtesy to reply to me in person. This time I would welcome a personal response.
Yours faithfully,
I.H.B.
London S.W.1
29 March 1965
To: Not So Much a Programme More a Way of Life, BBC, Broadcasting House, Portland Place London W.1
Dear Sirs,
Until Friday night I was a fan of your show ‘Not So Much a Programme etc.’ but it is completely beyond me how you can invite such a revolting pig (and quite frankly there is no other word for the man) as Bernard Levin on your show. To let such a creature speak about the former Prime Minister of England in the manner he did and do NOTHING about it – completely amazes me. I also found your skit on Vietnam discusting [sic] and then, last night, a couple of hours after the death of the Princess Royal, you dared to show that tasteless skit about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Have you no respect for anybody or anything?