What Price Scruples?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/bbc/11975749/BBC-to-sell-downloads-of-un-PC-classic-comedies-it-banned-from-TV.html

[Hypognosis]

Worse than that, AOG. Assuming those 700 complaints were in the 70s, contemporary with the original transmissions, then the UK population was around 55 million, at the time.

Or was that a typo?

Or are you quoting the estimated audience ratings, for the show?

The thing with complaint letters is that the numbers need to be scaled up to account for those who are equally disgruntled but too apathetic to bother writing a letter, or too stingey; begrudging the price of a stamp for giving the Beeb a piece of their mind. Then again, you could factor up by 100:1 and it would still be tiny compared to the population.

I'm interested to know which episode got edited. I was probably too young to have seen the original broadcasts and I've read elsewhere that it didn't catch on with the public immediately. For many years, "experimental" BBC2 comedies would be put out at 9pm, clashing with the main news programme, on BBC1 and only Python fans might have paid attention to a John Cleese project from episode one. 700 complaints out of what was already a select crowd might have been considered significant enough, at the time, to justify the edit. (?)

[hc4361]

Hypognosis, it was two racial slurs against Indians that was edited out

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2013/jan/23/fawlty-towers-isnt-racist-major-gowen-is

[hc4361]

Apologies, it was use of the N word and the W word from golliwog