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How Sandi Toksvig started a C-word storm at the Mail
BBC exec in the Kensington doghouse after judging that 'delight' at joke would outweigh offence caused
The Daily Mail, always on the lookout for "indecent" slip-ups at the BBC, is back on the warpath. After the Ross and Brand saga and, more recently, Simon Amstell, the paper has lit on the much-loved comedienne and broadcaster Sandi Toksvig and a joke she cracked on The News Quiz last October.
The joke involved what the paper calls "the most offensive word in English". Actually, the C-word was never broadcast. What Toksvig said on the popular Radio 4 show was: "It's the Tories who have put the 'n' into cuts" - leaving it to the listeners to work out the obvious.
What has exercised the Mail is that an offended listener, Colin Harrow, was fobbed off by the Beeb with a rejection of his complaint.
The BBC admitted that the joke had been cleared before it was aired by Paul Mayhew-Archer, who at the time was commissioning editor of Radio 4 comedy.
Mayhew-Archer said it was his job to balance the offence the joke might cause some listeners against the "delight" it might give others. "I say delight because I thought it was a good joke and I knew that a huge number of fans of the programme would love it," he said.
For good measure, Mayhew-Archer went on to argue that the C-word "does not seem to have quite the shock value it did". Maybe not at Broadcasting House.
Intriguingly, Colin Harrow, the man who found the joke unacceptable, is a former journalist now retired from the hurly-burly of Fleet Street to the Lake District where he paints landscapes and portraits - presumably to the accompaniment of Radio 4 - and sells his art through a gift shop in Cockermouth.
Had he worked on the Mail rather than the Mirror, he might not have been so easily offended.
Indeed, London journalists were amused yesterday to see the Mail of all papers describe the C-word as not only "the most offensive word in English" but also the "most abhorrent to women".
The paper's own editor-in-chief, Paul Dacre, has been known to employ it so liberally that, as Nick Davies pointed out in his book Flat Earth News, the morning editorial conference at the Mail's Kensington HQ is dubbed by staffers 'the Vagina Monologues'. ·
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I heard the original programme (which was broadcast last October, for chrissake) and I thought it was a mildly amusing joke. As with the Brand/Ross row, no-one would have bothered with it had the Mail not put it on their front page. Haven't the stupid c***s got anything better to do?
And the Daily Mail put the 'w' into 'tatty newspaper'.
Mr Harrow lives in Cock-'er-mouth... and finds this joke offensive?
The 'n in cuts' jibe was seen on a placard during a London demo and screened on British Television news long before Ms Toksvig even found out about it.
What the news slots didn't have, however, is this whinnying Colin Harrow who appears to have gone through life without encountering the word he complains about which, given his attitude, is very surprising.
Eric Idle performed a well known Monty Python sketch in which he played a man who could not pronounce the letter c. He would use b instead. So car became bar: cat became bat, and so on. But he pronounced kangaroo correctly. He was ok with ks. So his friend suggested he should just imagine his cs as ks. Idle thought that an excellent idea and was amazed he had never thought of it before. "Silly bunt" he said.
Same joke isn't it? And if it's ok for the Pythons......