BrianH
At the Start
Amid all the hoo-hah about the televising of the hit show one thing has puzzled me. Not the fact that there have so far been 20,000 complaints from people who haven't yet seen the show - that's par for the course. Rather, the massive discrepancy between calculations of how many swear words there are in the show.
Mediawatch, which is the modern name for the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association founded by Mary Whitehouse, claims that ther are 8,000, This is even more than double the number that the Sun claimed in one of its regular anti-BBC diatribes. The show's writers and management said that the number was 451. (One early claim from them was 375, but they didn't count one particular word as a swear word and Mediawatch did.)
These days we are all used to spin and even Sun readers know which items in their paper of choice to ignore but the gap between 451 and 8,000 was so big as to warrant investigation.
I now know why that gap exists. The word "arse", say, appears in a song. The authors count that as one swear word. But it happens to be in a part of the song that is sung by the entire chorus. there are twenty people in the chorus at that time, so Mediawatch count it as twenty!
You may have guessed my view - over half a million people have paid to see the award winning show, which has played to packed houses in London having opened at the Edinburgh Festival. It has garnered eight Olivier nominations, including one for Best New Musical. It will be broadcast on BBC2 at 10.00pm and for an hour beforehand there is a documentary about the show, which, in the unlikely event that there is anyone who doesn't know what to expect, will explain to them what thay are in for.
I say that anyone who is likely to be offended by the show need not watch it.
There are plans to open on Broadway in the spring - now that will be fun...
Mediawatch, which is the modern name for the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association founded by Mary Whitehouse, claims that ther are 8,000, This is even more than double the number that the Sun claimed in one of its regular anti-BBC diatribes. The show's writers and management said that the number was 451. (One early claim from them was 375, but they didn't count one particular word as a swear word and Mediawatch did.)
These days we are all used to spin and even Sun readers know which items in their paper of choice to ignore but the gap between 451 and 8,000 was so big as to warrant investigation.
I now know why that gap exists. The word "arse", say, appears in a song. The authors count that as one swear word. But it happens to be in a part of the song that is sung by the entire chorus. there are twenty people in the chorus at that time, so Mediawatch count it as twenty!
You may have guessed my view - over half a million people have paid to see the award winning show, which has played to packed houses in London having opened at the Edinburgh Festival. It has garnered eight Olivier nominations, including one for Best New Musical. It will be broadcast on BBC2 at 10.00pm and for an hour beforehand there is a documentary about the show, which, in the unlikely event that there is anyone who doesn't know what to expect, will explain to them what thay are in for.
I say that anyone who is likely to be offended by the show need not watch it.
There are plans to open on Broadway in the spring - now that will be fun...
