The erasing of Savile: They missed one!

[Don Satchley]

References to Jimmy Savile must be in the thousands on old tv shows. Impersonations etc come to mind. I was watching CBeebies of all channels this morning with my daughter and on The Tweenies the old chap was impersonating Jimmy Savile in a mock TOTP scene, complete with wig and trademark chortle. Do you think that even this sort of thing will eventually be erased or stopped from being repeated? A shame to blemish these type of shows by removing whole episodes from being shown again imho.
Don

[GarethR]

To be honest, given that there are about 4700 editions of the Tweenies, all near-identical (or that's what it feels like when you've got preschool kids), the loss of a single episode doesn't really count for much.

[Don Satchley]

Point taken Gareth but would people on here have similar views if there was a Jimmy Savile impersonation in the middle of a Dr Who, Public Eye or Callan episode? To each their own. My point is that archive tv could be full of holes soon if every reference to him is erased.

[Mark C Bale]

Who knows, Saville sendups on current DVDs like the TWO RONNIES may become collectors items in the future.

[Ross]

I wonder if Jim'll Jinx It on Russ Abbott would cause problems. I know these don't get shown anyway, but if repeats were decided upon would they worry about even an indirect reference like this?

[Jezza]

Didn't take long for the papers to pick up on that Tweenies episode...wonder if it's on iplayer?

My local shop played the Peter Kay song "Is this the way to Amarillo" the other week, so looked up the song on You Tube, and guess who was on it! The comments are quite funny for that one now!

I'm guessing no one previewed that Tweenies episode beforehand, or maybe they thought it would go way above the kids heads, it's not as if they will know who he is!

[didi-5]

I completely forgot he was in the Amarillo video. Such a 'cult figure' though must have been impersonated thousands of times.

[Mickey]

The Beeb has apologised: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21108337. This is getting bloody stupid now. You cannot possibly airbrush a man like that out of the archives. Whether popular or not, he was a pretty massive part of cultural history for a good fifty years. References and impersonations are going to crop up, inevitably.

What's wrong with an impersonation anyway? By definition it's poking fun, and isn't that what the world has always done with "hated" figures?

[Ross]

I just wish the BBC would grow a spine and tell the right-wing press to get stuffed.

The Mail are quoted one complainer as saying "it was bang out of order" which shows the sort of troglodyte that gets worked up about this sort of thing.

[boblet]

Don't expect to see any Grumbleweeds repeats any time soon...

[billo]

Much as I of course have no time for Jimmy Savile or had prior to the revelations when many were hailing 'Sir Jimmy' etc - I always found him an unlikely 'Pop person' as such, he didn't seem to have the sheer musical knowledge of say a Alan 'Fluff' Freeman, Pete Murray, Mr. David Jacobs or Brian Matthew etc, (all of whom were a fair bit older than the kids but so obviously 'knew their stuff' musically) ....Jimmy Saville also was a good bit older than the Beat Boom generation, but I found him to be rather boorish, so very full of himself & frankly rather silly with all his out of place teen flambouyance covering basically a dour looking and sounding Northern bloke with a 'slab' like face... true he did alot for charity...but with a price as we now learn - I was no fan of his even all those years ago...

Nevertheless it looks like George Orwell was right in '1984' with his 'Minstery of Truth' etc - it appears BBC and co are all now busily 're-writing' history and 'Airbrushing out' anyone who falls from grace etc....

what next ? - ANYONE 'nasty' or 'no longer acceptable as having existed' duly gets 'Airbrushed out' of existance ? (have we become Soviet Russia at it's worst ?)

besides people it's become neccessary to 'delete' non PC items too...as we so loftily 'correct' the flawed past...

I see on a re-issue of the 'Abbey Road' album, the cigarette was 'deleted' from Paul McCartney's hand....as we DON'T endorse that sort of thing now in our so much better enlightened (& in truth self deluding) society....

[GarethR]

Point taken Gareth but would people on here have similar views if there was a Jimmy Savile impersonation in the middle of a Dr Who, Public Eye or Callan episode?

You're comparing apples and oranges. The whole point of a cookie-cutter series like the Tweenies is that you knock out a large number to a strict format, they're all pretty much the same, and because there's no continuing story they don't have to be watched in any particular order. You could take dozens of episodes out of the run and it would make no difference to the perception of the series as a whole.

maybe they thought it would go way above the kids heads, it's not as if they will know who he is!

Nope, it will have been a simple cockup. If the BBC had been aware of the content, there's absolutely no way they'd have allowed it to be shown in the current climate. It's not the kids' reaction that concerns them (as you say, none of them will have the first idea who Savile is), it's how the parents will react - or how they *fear* the parents will react - that matters here.

I can well imagine the TC's colour draining as that sequence started (not that it will have been their fault).

[Brian F]

From the piece on the TV text news it was more the fact that it was shown at around 9pm on CBBies rather than that it was shown at all that caused the uproar.

If it had been midnight on BBC4 I suspect only us here would have noticed :-)

[Don Satchley]

Well it seems my post was a little prescient. Unsurprisingly there is "disgust" and "uproar" from the easily offended and all who read the Daily Mail I am sure. I agree with some of the posters on this thread that to remove all mention of people like Jimmy Savile is definitely Orwellian. As for Tweenies, I am no fan of the show but it really does seem like double standards when people here scoff at episodes being deleted from history and then hold shows like the ones I mentioned as somehow more important. Archive tv is archive tv no matter the nature of the show imho.
Don

[Don Satchley]

From the piece on the TV text news it was more the fact that it was shown at around 9pm on CBBies rather than that it was shown at all that caused the uproar.

If it had been midnight on BBC4 I suspect only us here would have noticed :-)

It was on at 9am. Must be a mistake in that article. CBeebies stops about 7pm and then starts back up around 6am.

[GarethR]

it really does seem like double standards when people here scoff at episodes being deleted from history and then hold shows like the ones I mentioned as somehow more important

Don, if you'd read what I wrote, I wasn't making any judgement about "importance". I was simply pointing out that dropping an episode from a continuing drama series is a very different thing to dropping an episode of the fucking Tweenies where there are hundreds more almost exactly like it.

It remains to be seen what the long-term effect of Savile references in archive programmes aimed at adults actually is. Meanwhile, in the here and now, a programme aimed at preschool children has been discovered to include a Savile reference (which was almost certainly originally intended to amuse parents watching with their kids). Given the events of the last few months I trust that nobody here is going to engage faux-naivety mode and wonder why that's perceived to be a reason to drop or edit it.

[Roll ACR]

it really does seem like double standards when people here scoff at episodes being deleted from history and then hold shows like the ones I mentioned as somehow more important

Don, if you'd read what I wrote, I wasn't making any judgement about "importance". I was simply pointing out that dropping an episode from a continuing drama series is a very different thing to dropping an episode of the fucking Tweenies where there are hundreds more almost exactly like it.

It remains to be seen what the long-term effect of Savile references in archive programmes aimed at adults actually is. Meanwhile, in the here and now, a programme aimed at preschool children has been discovered to include a Savile reference (which was almost certainly originally intended to amuse parents watching with their kids). Given the events of the last few months I trust that nobody here is going to engage faux-naivety mode and wonder why that's perceived to be a reason to drop or edit it.

Hear! Hear!

To be honest I think anyone with any perspective and intelligence will have LOLed at the Saville impersonation in "The Tweenies" but of course the stupid people and shit-stirrers will be "outraged" and it's always been the same. I wouldn't have a problem with the BBC de-listing that particular episode for purely political reasons. After all we live in the real world, not one populated entirely by intelligent, well rounded adults.

If, on the other hand, references to a "nigger in the woodpile" had been snipped from "The Power Game" or "Hine" or indeed the plethora of sexist, homophobic and racist language to be found in archive releases, I'd feel more aggrieved. Not because I enjoy bigoted language, but because it's fundamentally wrong to retrospectively take offence and sensor things so as to whitewash the past.

[David Boothroyd]

Oh look:

[Billy]

I've had the very same clip of that episode on an old videotape for over a decade, recorded when I was a bored twelve year old taping random bits and pieces to test out the video recorder. Probably could have put it on youtube months ago. Oh well.

Next up - uproar as UK Gold repeat Pertwee Doctor Who serial 'Colony in Space' featuring a character saying the line "Don't worry, Jim'll fix it". Am I right?

[fatcat]

Has the late Jimmy Savile actually been found guilty of anything yet?
or are we still at the rumour and innuendo stage?

Strange double standards about people,when the BBC are quite happy to show Michael Jackson at every opportunity.

[Cheeseford]

Well, to be completely fair to Jacko, he was tried and acquitted on all counts. Savile has not been tried, but seems to have been convicted anyway.

[fatcat]

Well, to be completely fair to Jacko, he was tried and acquitted on all counts. Savile has not been tried, but seems to have been convicted anyway.

But no witch hunt or BBC appearance omissions for Jacko during the rumour and speculation stage.

[brigham]

Well, to be completely fair to Jacko, he was tried and acquitted on all counts. Savile has not been tried, but seems to have been convicted anyway.

But no witch hunt or BBC appearance omissions for Jacko during the rumour and speculation stage.

Also no universal condemnation hereabouts of 'all who read the Daily Star'. Perhaps 'chaps in caps' read it, as opposed to 'grammar-school types'.

[Ross]

Ah, g'wan then: The Daily Star is for knuckle-dragging philistines who like to let it do their thinking for them. The sort of moron that'd beat up a paediatrician and thinks The One Show's worth watching.

[Clive]

I would really like to meet all these "horrified" parents who accused the BBC of being "sick"

I question if they actually exist outside of the imaginations of the of the newspaper editors, or those with a personal axe to grind against the BBC. Was anyone actually "horrified", did anyone run with their screaming kids from the screen at the appearence of this 11 year old characterure ?

[Brian F]

From the piece on the TV text news it was more the fact that it was shown at around 9pm on CBBies rather than that it was shown at all that caused the uproar.

If it had been midnight on BBC4 I suspect only us here would have noticed :-)

It was on at 9am. Must be a mistake in that article. CBeebies stops about 7pm and then starts back up around 6am.

Sorry Typo on my behalf. I do a club magazine and some are legendary - I once left out the r in a the play title "First Jobs" took year to live that down!!!!!!!

[Brian F]

I've had the very same clip of that episode on an old videotape for over a decade, recorded when I was a bored twelve year old taping random bits and pieces to test out the video recorder. Probably could have put it on youtube months ago. Oh well.

Next up - uproar as UK Gold repeat Pertwee Doctor Who serial 'Colony in Space' featuring a character saying the line "Don't worry, Jim'll fix it". Am I right?

I'm sure that it was posted on Roobarbs that "Colony in Space" was transmitted before the first series of "Jim'll Fix It", so it wasn't a reference. Not that the witch hunt brigade would care.

[stuartfanning]

My suggestion to counter balance the nonsense from the right wing tabloids, anyone who has anything featuring Jimmy Savile upload it on to YouTube. :D

[Beaker]

Snowed in, so caught the bus this morning and acidentally read The Metro (ok, I say 'read', glanced at with disdain more like).....they featured a, clearly made up complaint, from a father who was not just disgusted at the apperance of a Savile-a-like but that the song he was introducing was 'One Finger One Thumb'.

Oh dear.

The Metro is a dreadful waste of trees, no wonder they give it away for free.

[Brock]

Don't expect to see any Grumbleweeds repeats any time soon...

At last! Something good has come out of the whole affair.