Vol. 31 No. 19 · 8 October 2009
pages 36-38 | 3770 words
Rumour Is Utterly Unfounded
Jenny Diski
- BuyFamily Newspapers?: Sex, Private Life and the British Popular Press 1918-78 by Adrian Bingham
Oxford, 298 pp, £55.00, February 2009, ISBN 978 0 19 927958 6
It was on Good Friday 1930 that listeners who tuned in to the BBC for the 6.30 evening news bulletin heard: ‘There is no news tonight.’ Piano music filled the hiatus before the next programme. In the same year the BBC’s Variety Programmes and Policy Guide for Writers and Producers stated:
Programmes must at all costs be kept free of crudities. There can be no compromise with doubtful material. It must be cut. There is an absolute ban upon the following: jokes about lavatories, effeminacy in men, immorality of any kind, suggestive references to honeymooning couples, chambermaids, fig leaves, ladies’ underwear (e.g. winter drawers on), animal habits (e.g. rabbits), lodgers, commercial travellers. When in doubt – cut it out.
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Letters
Vol. 31 No. 21 · 5 November 2009
From Garth Clarke
Lord Beaverbrook, as Jenny Diski describes him, may well have seen himself as a protector of family values, but in the final years of his life the old man was in need of some protection himself (LRB, 8 October). I worked for the Sunday Express in 1961 and have fond memories of the Jacob Epstein bust of Beaverbrook that reigned over the foyer of the Express building. It was a typical Epstein work, with a small gap between slightly parted lips, and it was into this tiny orifice that fag-ends were constantly being placed by disrespectful employees. Removing them became a full-time job for a harassed commissionaire.
Garth Clarke
Sydney
Vol. 31 No. 22 · 19 November 2009
From Gabriel Laszlo
Jenny Diski’s entertaining review of Adrian Bingham’s Family Newspapers? (LRB, 8 October) reminded me of a story I heard at the Cambridge University Medical Society in about 1955. The speaker was Charles Hill, who was at various times a general practitioner, the ‘radio doctor’, secretary of the British Medical Association, postmaster-general and chairman of the Independent Television Authority. During the Second World War there were various public health campaigns, one of which was a newspaper advertisement: ‘Always wash your hands after using the WC.’ This was turned down by only two journals. The News of the World said that its readers would not tolerate anything so disgusting. The editor of the Times said that his readers always washed their hands.
Gabriel Laszlo
Bristol
