Let’s move the TV watershed back two hours - and see who complains

The “F” word popped out of my mouth the other day at an inappropriate moment. It took me a few seconds to realize what I’d done, and a few more seconds to realize that I need to do something about my use of bad language. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a Tourette’s Syndrome-level potty mouth, but I reach far too often for the easy expletive, either to relieve tension or for a cheap laugh.

I reserve my worst outbursts for when I’m on my own – either driving the car, dealing with finances or watching TV late at night - or listening to radio at any time: all situations where you can’t communicate directly with the object of your anger. But I’ve never been averse to letting rip in public, when the context is right. (Clive James gave an excellent radio talk on contextual swearing some two years ago - it’s available here, and is well worth a listen).

The last time I tried to clean up my act was when my son was little. One day, with him strapped in the back of the car – he was about three – someone cut me up on the Goldhawk Road and I vented. After a pause I heard a little voice from the back seat quietly chanting “Uck! Uck! Uck! Uck!”. (A few weeks later, again in the car, following a similar outburst, he asked, “Daddy, what’s an anchor?”)

BBC comedians make me swear a lot. And, of course, they swear a lot, so there might be some connection. This week, I found myself watching Sean Locke on Live at the Apollo at 9.30PM on BBC One. I like Locke: he’s an old-fashioned card – the sort of amiable, quick-witted bloke who’d liven up any workplace. His 12-minute act was amusing enough (especially his routine about the supermarket chain, Lidl – “Because I don’t recognize any of the products, it’s like being on holiday.”) Fantastically clean by the standards of most stand-ups, he nevertheless used the words (and I know some of these aren’t swear-words) “shit”, “pissed”, “genitals”, “vagina”, “bollocks”, “penis” and “arse” – as well as what might have been an off-colour remark about the Pope, but may not have been: I didn’t really get it. 

The second act was some Liverpudlian who started off by describing being a stand-up comic as “like having oral sex with a girl who’s got big teeth”, and followed this up with three “shitting meselfs”. (He also referred to his “nan” within the first minute or so – what is it with Northerners and their bloody “nans”?)

Of course, these chaps are very mild compared to what passes for live comedy on the BBC these days (the phrase, “he f*cked your grand-daughter” once uttered on Radio 2 by that immortal Monarch of Mirth, Jonathan Ross, springs to mind, as does the repellent Frankie Boyle cracking a joke about the Queen’s vagina on that repository of fashionable vileness, Mock the Week) – but I realize that I now find even Sean Locke’s level of rudeness unacceptable in the context of BBC One at a time when no-one over twelve is in bed. I believe that the majority of the population (and almost everyone over 30) laughs nervously, but feels uncomfortable when faced with swear-words or references to sexual acts on TV. The BBC and Channel 4, in particular have pushed back the smut barrier so relentlessly over the past few decades that it might as well no longer exist (even the “c” word makes the occasional appearance).

The broadcasters argue that this is how people talk. Yet bad language and the merest hint of smut is ruthlessly censored on all news and current affairs programmes, which are supposed to trade in unvarnished reality. I can understand why raw, realistic dramas such as The Sopranos and The Wire might suffer from not being able to employ the language of their respective milieus, but I don’t see why stand-up comedians – who, in effect, we’ve invited into our sitting rooms – need to use language or refer to activities which their “nans” would no doubt deplore.

Broadcasters also claim that the younger generation doesn’t mind bad language or explicit smut. How do they know? Have they asked them?Besides, if the young are comfortable with this sort of material, it’s probably because broadcasters have put so much effort into making it a part of mainstream entertainment. (This is a favourite trick of the BBC and Channel 4: for instance, you spend decades denigrating the Monarchy and Christianity, and then turn round and act amazed that neither is as popular as they once were.)

Finally, they point out that all this sordid frightfulness is only broadcast after the watershed.

Ah, yes, that old fig-leaf. 

It’s time, I believe, to revisit the whole notion of the “watershed”: the profusion of video on the internet has made a nonsense of it. When you access Live at the Apollo on BBC iPlayer, there’s a warning that the requested programme contains material unsuitable for children, before asking you to tick a box to declare that you’re over 16. Does the BBC seriously imagine that 15-year olds go to bed on the dot of nine? 

Why should the sluice-gates be opened at 9.00? Why not simply shift it all back to 11.00? (If a fifteen-year old is watching TV at 11PM, his parents evidently don’t give a toss about them, so why should we?). You could still have Live at the Apollo on at 9.30 and Mock the Week at 10.00 but the “comedians” would be told to clean up their acts. Similarly, any realistic dramas featuring unpleasant sex scenes (they always are unpleasant) and strong language would be broadcast after eleven. And to get round the online problem, why not simply remove all programmes containing bad language or explicit references to sex from the iPlayer?

The argument that such policies would amount to censorship simply won’t wash: broadcasting is a highly censored medium in any case. When was the last time you heard a slighting reference to homosexuals, lesbians, multiculturalism, mass immigration, Muslims, Barack Obama, the EU or AGW enthusiasts on the BBC? And yet a large section of the population would quite happily bend your ear on one or all of these topics.

It can’t be that the broadcasters believe they will lose viewers by tightening restrictions: after all, they enjoy huge success with contemporary soap operas, which don’t exactly bristle with references to oral sex, defecation or genitals (although, to be fair, they do feature the occasional “nan”). So one has to conclude that what we have here is an example of social engineering: a blatant challenge to hated bourgeois values by TV executives brought up on the destructive myths of the late 1960s left-wing counterculture. 

And I have a feeling many of us are getting just a teensy bit tired of having our values mocked and destroyed.

I realise that permanently moving the watershed back two hours is a big leap, so why don’t the public service channels (the BBC and Channel 4) set aside a week next summer - when they show nothing but sport and repeats in any case - and ban all bad language and explicit smut (and insults to the Royal Family and Christianity while they’re about it) before eleven o’clock. And see how many viewers complain or switch over in the hunt for more “adult” (i.e. adolescent) content. 

Apart from the tiny elite who work directly for the liberal media, I reckon the answer would be “none”! 

If nothing else, it might just help me set my own house in order!