I'm Sure I Speak For Many Others...

by Colin Shindler

  I sincerely hope this programme will be taken off the air as soon as possible, and with it David Frost forever. I for one assure you I will never watch it again.

  Yours sincerely,

  S. T.

  Clevedon, Somerset

  30 March 1965

  To: Mr. N. Sherrin BBC Television Centre Wood Lane London W.12

  Dear Sir,

  It is with great pleasure we read that ‘Not so much a Programme’ is to be killed off.

  Those responsible for this programme should have been drowned in their own Cess-pits long ago.

  If Frost and his crowd had seen, and gone through one hundredth part of what the Duke of Windsor and many thousands of his age group had had to stomach, they would have needed more than one change of under-pants.

  It is to be hoped that the satire put over in America is on American life – Even the lowest animal rarely bites the hand that feeds it.

  Yours faithfully,

  C. H. H.

  Copy sent to:-

  The Daily Mail

  The Daily Express

  Points of View

  London W3

  30 March 1965

  To: Sir Hugh Greene, BBC, Wood Lane, London W12

  Dear Sir,

  I was amazed to read in the newspapers that ‘after the finish of the present series of Not So Much a Programme the BBC intend to discontinue this programme.’

  Your decision over this programme did not obviously take into consideration the point of view of the many thousands of viewers who watch and enjoy this programme. It occurs to me that you are catering for the minority, and surely you must realise that this just isn’t practical, as the BBC2 Channel are [sic] now proving. I get the impression that the people who ring or write to complain appear to watch the programme solely for this purpose. If these people are offended by this programme, why watch, there is a switch on all Television Sets marked off. Surely they are capable of using it.

  Anyone who watched this programme last Friday night when Bernard Levin was criticising Sir Alec Douglas Home would only look on Mr. Levin as an imbecile for saying such stupid and childish things, and in any case the other two gentlemen on the programme made him look so foolish that the only reaction he should have got from this statement was to laugh at him as you would a child instead of taking the poor idiot seriously.

  Yours faithfully,

  D.J.M.

  London SW20

  12 April 1965

  Dear Mr. Frost,

  I was just on the point of giving back my rented Television Set as there is nothing worth viewing now that your programme has come to an end. But reading the papers this morning I saw a gleam of hope seeing that you are having talks about doing another of your shows.

  Seeing your programme last night I felt like going to a funeral and felt such an emptiness in not being able to see you and your colleagues on 3 nights a week during the dark days of winter any more.

  After all it is us, the viewers, who help to finance the BBC in paying £4 for the licence and I think we should have a say in what we want to see especially when it concerns a programme like yours which is full of talent and life.

  I hope you will come back in the very near future because until then my set will be mostly switched off.

  Good luck to you and all the members of your cast for the future,

  (Mrs.) R. T. A middle-aged viewer

  and

  Miss G. T. A young girl in her 20s

  I could add hundreds of names from all walks of life and all ages to our signatures just to let you and the BBC know how much your programme is appreciated.

  Edinburgh

  12 April 1965

  To: The Director General British Broadcasting Corporation

  NOTSOMUCHA

  Sir,

  We, the undersigned, wish to protest against the arbitrary closure of ‘Not so much a Programme, More a Way of Life.’

  We believe that this programme (and its predecessor TW3) provided entertainment of fine calibre and we are unable to understand why it has been taken off. Satire, after all, is a well established genre. The corpus of English literature without Pope, Swift, Samuel Butler, Shaw, Orwell and Eliot would be emaciated indeed.

  Unfortunately, few read satire nowadays and yet it as refreshing and necessary as ever it was. Ned Sherrin’s team, in our opinion, ventilated so many avenues of contemporary life that BBC television without them will be so dull as to be almost dead. What a feast for the intellect lies ahead of us on Sunday evenings – A Tale of Two Cities; Evening Service; ancient Hollywood film; Sunday Night at the London Palladium (on the rival channel); and whatever is to be substituted for David Frost’s show. Not very stimulating! Has the Sunday evening programme any virtue except that it is free from any taint of satire?

  Yours etc.

  R. H. and 47 other signatories

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THAT WORD

  It is perhaps hard to remember now when we have lived through an era that celebrated the clothing manufacturer French Connection’s cheeky rebranding of itself as FCUK, that the very slight rearrangement of those four letters almost caused national apoplexy in November 1965. Kenneth Tynan, the former theatre and subsequently film critic of The Observer, now the Literary Manager of the National Theatre and no stranger to controversy, deliberately spoke the word aloud on Sherrin’s latest version of TW3, called BBC-3 – although as a more accurate reflection of the programme’s content, the producer might well have stuck to his original thought of using as the title It’s All Been Done Before. BBC-3 was, in truth, a pale imitation of the wit and innovation that had marked TW3 – with this one exception.

  In June 1965 the British Board of Film Censors had banned the film version of John Cleland’s eighteenth-century novel Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. In The Observer, Tynan launched a fierce diatribe against the decision, claiming that ‘erotic stimulation is a minor but perfectly legitimate function of art’. Invited by Sherrin to discuss on television the topic of censorship, Tynan decided to take the attack to the opposition from the kick-off. That accounts for the somewhat convoluted manner in which he manages to get the word he wanted to say into his reply to a question posed by Robert Robinson on what was really a different topic entirely.

  The reaction was truly astonishing. The momentous Unilateral Declaration of Independence by Rhodesia which had taken place two days before gave way to this new controversy, which temporarily also wiped the Vietnam War off the front pages. The files in the Written Archive are bulging with the cries of the outraged. There were questions in the House of Commons, condemnations in the press and Mary Whitehouse wrote to the Queen. (The Queen forwarded the letter to the Postmaster General, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, who said that he didn’t think it was his job to interfere with the BBC.) In public, Mrs Whitehouse contented herself with the observation that ‘Mr Tynan should have his bottom smacked’. Presumably she was unaware of the fact that Mr Tynan was a dedicated and proselytising bottom-smacker himself and, indeed, it appears from his diaries that when he wasn’t at the National Theatre or writing his column for The Observer, he spent most of his time spanking the bottom of any woman whom he could persuade to allow him to do so.

  There were four motions set down in the House, supported by 133 Labour and Tory backbenchers, attacking both Tynan and the BBC. Tynan had not warned either Sherrin or Robinson that he was going to use the word, but their protestations to that effect were not always believed, such was the intensity of the furore. The BBC came out with an official statement that was essentially a fudge – neither condemning nor approving what had been said but rather expressing regret for the offence that had been taken. Huw Wheldon, the Controller of Programmes, on the other hand, openly stated his support for Tynan, telling the press that he found the subject had been handled ‘responsibly, intelligently and reasonably’. Such public approval for Tynan’s dastardly action merely stimulated the letter writers to new heights of anger and reinforced their
belief that the BBC was taking the country to hell in a handcart.

  It seems logical that this section should begin with a transcript of what was actually spoken in the BBC studio at Television Centre on Saturday 13th November 1965, the night that a single word stampeded the country into a national fury.

  TRANSCRIPTION OF A DISCUSSION CHAIRED BY ROBERT ROBINSON ON BBC-3, 13 NOVEMBER 1965

  CLAPPING

  CHAIR: Mary McCarthy [is] the author of several novels and the best-known perhaps is The Group. Kenneth Tynan is the Literary Manager of the National Theatre. Tomorrow night Kenneth Tynan is to propose at a forum at the Royal Court Theatre that censorship in the theatre should be abolished and on this, Mary McCarthy is agreed. Both feel that censorship in any form is illegitimate. Now I wonder if this means, Kenneth Tynan, that you’d allow a play to be put on at the National Theatre in which, for instance, sexual intercourse took place on stage.

  TYNAN: Oh I think so, certainly. I mean I doubt if there are very few rational people in this world to whom the word ‘fuck’ is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden. I think that anything that can be printed or said can also be seen, and I don’t see why we should draw a distinguishing sort of division between great art, which is allowed to do these things – D.H. Lawrence and so forth – and the fourth-rate striptease show. I think the important thing is to allow all artists, however base and however great, to express themselves. Now if in doing that they contravene the laws of libel or obscenity in this country then they must answer in court, but I don’t think they should be censored before they do it. I think they should be allowed to do it, say it and show it and then after that, the authorities, the Director of Public Prosecutions can, after that, decide whether action should be taken, but not before it happens.

  Isle of Aran

  14 November 1965

  Sir,

  Four-letter words are neither entertaining nor educational. I PROTEST – vehemently.

  Yours etc.,

  L. F. (Mrs.)

  Smethwick

  17 November 1965

  Sir,

  I have tried to calm down since Saturday night after seeing B.B.C.3 – I was so angry I couldn’t write – everyone who had anything to do with that programme should be dismissed immediately.

  If Mr Kenneth Tynan wants to talk as he did – why not keep it till he gets home and talk to the people he works with if they can stomach him – we do not want any more programmes like Saturday’s performance in our own sitting rooms and as we pay £5 a year I reckon we can say what we want.

  Has anyone at the B.B.C. got any teenage children??? Do we want the next generation thinking of nothing but Sex? Does using bad language do any good? You have lost a few more viewers through Saturday night’s bit of work.

  My weekend was ruined and if this R[obert] R[obinson] and K[enneth] T[ynan] receive all the curses I have wished upon them then they certainly will suffer.

  If I had lived near to the B.B.C. I would have waited for Mr T to tell him what I thought of him. If he can’t do any good in this world it would be far better for him to keep away from Television and Radio for ever.

  N. W.

  P.S. I am still seething even after writing this – K.T. must go and everyone like him – let them have their talks in their own homes – not ours!

  University of Essex Union

  14 November 1965

  Dear Sir,

  We the undersigned wish to express our deepest disgust and contempt of the incident in last Saturday’s ‘BBC3’ programme in which Kenneth Tynan outraged public decency on television by uttering a four letter obscenity. The general approach to life personified in BBC programmes is manifestly trite, vulgar, unentertaining [sic] and unedifying. We suggest the BBC break its commitment to a policy of moral anarchy, of being vulgar and ‘iconoclastic’ for no worthier motive than puerile desire to shock its public, and renew its commitment to the edification and entertainment of the public. It should at least portray the decency and responsibility to avoid lowering its viewers to its own wretched and worthless level.

  The BBC should restrict its time to those communicators who are acting from noble motives, if the word still has meaning amid the indifference and irresponsibility thrust down our unwilling throats. If it is incapable of fulfilling this task, the service should cease to demoralise the nation by closing down.

  As a token of the BBC’s acceptance of its responsibility to the public, we request that Mr. Tynan be publicly and permanently banned from further appearances on television.

  Yours Sincerely

  Eight names

  The students at Essex University were obviously of a different character from the extreme left-wing activists I met there in the early 1970s!

  Swansea

  14 November 1965

  To: Lord Normanbrooke, Chairman, B.B.C. London W1

  Sir,

  Last night, in the privacy of my sitting room, and to my family [?sic] a man, employed by your Corporation, uttered, through the medium of a Television Broadcast known as ‘B.B.C.3’ a foul obscenity which has never before been heard in my home and, I trust, never will be heard again. I refer to the use of the word ‘fuck’ spoken before my wife, my teenage daughter, my teenage son, my son’s teenage girl-friend and before me. [No mention of the dog, I notice.]

  Great breaches of taste have occurred all too frequently in the past and have been ‘glossed over’ by an apology in the press. It appears that no effective measures are being taken to prevent recurrences of such behaviour.

  I therefore require by return of post a personal apology from yourself and the producer of BBC3 and from the moron who uttered the word and also details of what disciplinary action are being taken in relation to this episode.

  Failing some adequate and immediate assurance on this point I intend instructing my lawyers forthwith to issue an injunction against your Corporation in the Chancery division to restrain you from repeating such insulting behaviour.

  Yours truly,

  F.S.W.

  Oxted Surrey

  17 November 1965

  Sir,

  Once again, you have outraged the public, by allowing one of your smutty-minded liberals to use a word, in his mindless argument, which is considered obscene in law, and for which people can be prosecuted for its use in public.

  How do you think we are to instil decent standards and morals into our young people, when you allow all this destructive filth to get by on the B.B.C. programmes?

  Your producer, Ned Sherrin, has given great offence to the public before, with his TW3 shows, and it is more than time he was removed – you to [sic].

  My teen-agers have been taught all their lives that certain words are obscene, yet so-called educated and responsible men allow filthy words and dirty ideas of morals to pass their lips on our screens very frequently.

  The once great B.B.C. is becoming like a tenth rate revue, with smutty, filthy talk, quite unchecked.

  It is also a forum for all extreme Left-wingers and coloured England haters. Either you, or they – preferably both – must go.

  R. T.

  Bardsey, Nr. Leeds

  16 November 1965

  To: Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, Director General, B.B.C. London W1

  Dear Sir,

  I regularly watch B.B.C.3 and it is a programme I thoroughly enjoy. On Saturday last during a discussion on Censorship of the Theatre etc., a man called Tynan used a four letter word. I am amazed by the fact that a man can use such a word on Television, which goes into millions of homes, without fear of the consequences, but if the same word is used in the street in the presence of a Police Officer then that person is taken to Court and charged with using obscene language.

  I have spoken to a number of men who saw this programme and they are agreed that this was a most offensive remark and they were all grateful that their wives and children were not present.

  One opinion being freely expressed is that there is far too much of this pornog
raphic material coming from Television Sets and the interesting thing is that it is invariably from B.B.C. It is apparent that you and your colleagues are completely out of touch with the public.

  I suggest that you have the power in your hands to do a great deal of good but with the above item, and plays such as ‘Up the Junction’, you are helping to lower the moral standards of the community.

  Yours faithfully,

  T.E.W.

  Dover

  19 November 1965

  To: Daily Mail cc. Brigadier Clarke MP; the B.B.C.

  That word

  I have just read your article in today’s Mail. As a Ranker Officer, in that I reached my Colonelcy the hard way, the statement that the present uproar comes from the Grundies is utter balls; knowing the vocabulary of the Barrack-room, all the four-letter words are familiar, and you are obviously confusing the BBC’s responsibility to it’s [sic] employers – the Public – with censorship.

  Radio and T.V. are just as much Public Services as the Gas Board or the Water Board. If instead of gas they piped H2S, or instead of water they piped stinking sewage into our homes, we should at once do something about it; so must it be with Radio, T.V. Theatre &c.

  I realise you have to write a load of old codswallop for a living, but spare us the indoctrination and stop telling us that the B.B.C. is an independent body responsible to no-one; they are responsible to US, the apathetic, Moronic and long-suffering Public.

  You may have heard of me, since the Mail made much of my having discarded my war decorations over the Beatles MBE together with world-wide reaction in Press and Radio, cabled congratulations reaching me from as far apart as New York and Capetown &c.

  Stop ‘kidding’ your readers that objection to sewage means censorship, and if you don’t like outspoken comment, apply that word to yourself!

  Yours sincerely,

  F.W.W.

  London N13

  16 November 1965

  Dear Sirs,

  Further to the rather childish furore over Mr. Tynan and BBC3, my wife and I (who both saw the programme) would like to say that we fully support Mr. Tynan in this matter and completely agree with him that ‘the word’ was used quite correctly and neutrally, as a perfectly valid – and indeed the best possible – illustration to a serious point in a – presumably – adult discussion on a very serious matter, viz. Theatre Censorship.