Tim article in The Times - "Why The Goodies had to 'get back' at Mary Whitehouse
23/05/2008 00:30 GMT

Posted by lisa

The following article appears in The Times Online at
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article3984004.ece:

From The Times
May 24, 2008

Why The Goodies had to 'get back' at Mary Whitehouse
Tim Brooke-Taylor recalls The Goodies’ best efforts to irritate Mrs Whitehouse

Normally I love stories where the little man or woman takes on the Establishment and wins. I did enjoy Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story, in spite of this particular little woman winning. I was not a fan of Mary Whitehouse, who did more harm to the arts than anyone I can think of. She certainly, for a time, hurt me.

It was possibly the most depressing moment of my life. I was at a party to celebrate the making of the first series of The Goodies. Our producer, John Howard Davies, stood on a chair to make an announcement. It was a letter from one of our viewers saying that she thought The Goodies was a great addition to the BBC’s output. Quite nice, we thought, until we heard the dreaded words – “from a Mrs Mary Whitehouse”. The room fell silent.

Many claims have been made for the Sixties. It was a time of change and, to my mind, nearly always for the better. But if it was truly permissive I didn’t see much of it, and Mrs Whitehouse tried her best to make sure I saw none of it at all.

On radio we’d had a hard time with censorship, but that only encouraged double entendre. Round the Horne got away with so much because the top brass didn’t understand. I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again once had an odd cut. We asked the producer why. He said, “Because the audience laughed.” He just assumed it was filthy.

Somehow we had to get back at Mary Whitehouse. We decided to do a show all about her. The character was called Mrs Desiree Carthorse and was played by Beryl Reid. In the show, Mrs Carthorse thought that we were the ideal people to make a clean film about the facts of life: Mrs Carthorse: “I don’t find you reading dirty books, looking at filthy TV programmes and playing around with girls. You are obviously . . .” Graeme Garden: “Unlucky.” Tim B-T (wanting the job): “Unlucky . . . no, no we’re pure, pure.”

We made a film, entitled How to Make Babies by Doing Dirty Things, with such narration as “Now we all know about the rude bits. Aren’t they rude? And as we get older they get ruder and ruder.”

We made Mary Whitehouse, we hoped, seem crass, with lines like: Bill: “What does your husband do?” Mrs C: “He keeps his distance.”

We then waited for Mrs Whitehouse’s reaction. But we heard nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The most pornographic pieces around as far as I was concerned involved horrific violence, but Mrs Whitehouse didn’t seem to mind that. Racially offensive stuff didn’t bother her, either. She was worried about language, the human body and procreation. My character once had to say “bloody hell”. I was made to redub it as “ruddy hell”. The BBC acknowledged that this was the power of Mrs Whitehouse. It was afraid of her.

We did finally shake off the curse of Mrs W, in an episode entitled Saturday Night Grease. I played a John Travolta type getting dressed to Night Fever on the record player. As I struggled into a pair of tight jeans, my Y-fronts were revealed to have a large carrot painted on the front. To this day it looks pretty innocent to me. But not to Mrs W. She sent a telegram to the Director-General of the BBC complaining specifically about the carrot. Phew! We were back in business, our street cred intact.