Bruce Forsyth Has The BBC In A Tangle
Let’s see the Corporation wriggle of of this sticky race row
October 9, 2009
Oh dear, Brucie. Oh dearie me. Just when the BBC was hoping that the Strictly Come Dancing “race row” was finally dying down, in you waltz and, like an elderly relative breaking wind at a family wedding, cause red faces all round again.
Bruce Forsyth, 81, show host and national treasure, declared yesterday that we should all get a “sense of humour” about the word “[edited by admin]”. We should, he said, laugh off dancer Anton du Beke telling his partner Laila Rouass that she “looked like a [edited by admin]” after she’d had a spray tan. This occurred shortly after du Beke jokingly asked Rouass, of Moroccan and Indian heritage, if she was a terrorist.
“You go back 25, 30, 40 years and there has always been a bit of humour about the whole thing,” said Bruce. “At one time the Americans used to call us ‘Limeys’ which doesn’t sound very nice, but we used to laugh about it.”
Ah, in that case he’ll forgive that ageist remark that I made earlier, implying that octogenarians can’t control their bowels. Funny, eh? Ha ha ha.
But seriously — does anybody really think that the word Limey, which referred to the British sucking limes to cure scurvy, is remotely comparable to [edited by admin]? Do all those people bombarding websites to make the point that it is no different from shortening “British” to “Brit” believe that, or are they pretending not to remember those vile jokes from the Seventies such as: “What’s transparent and lies in the gutter?” Answer: “A [edited by admin] with the s*** kicked out of him”?
In those days the word “[edited by admin]” was often uttered before an act of violence. I know we’re supposed to make allowances for people of a different generation, but I would have thought they’d remember this more than most.
The BBC won’t thank Bruce, who I don’t think is racist and who later issued a clarification that “racially offensive language is never either funny or acceptable”, for reigniting this fire.
But, interestingly, while it made great show of sacking Carol Thatcher for referring to a tennis player as a “golliwog”, it is steadfastly standing by du Beke. This may be because du Beke apologised unreservedly. A more cynical explanation could be that while Thatcher was dispensable, du Beke is not. Sacking him would mess up SCD and leave them with a pre-recorded series of Hole in the Wall which du Beke fronts and is a key brick in the Saturday evening schedule.
Who knows? What we do know, though, is that this issue hasn’t gone away. And no matter how nimble of foot, the BBC won’t be tapdancing easily out of this one.
Source; TimesOnLine.co.uk
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