The English comic actor David Jason was a regular on the pre-Python British comedy series Do Not Adjust Your Set, along with Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, and Neil Innes. He was the voice of the cartoon Danger Mouse and has starred in several British TV shows over the years. He has this to say about the relaxing of restrictions on TV, and its effect on comedy: The trouble now is we have stand-up comedians who have forgotten about innuendo. In music-hall days, and especially at the BBC, you were never allowed swearwords, so they came up with brilliant wheezes in Beyond Our Ken, The Goon Show and Round the Horne - Hello, Im Jules and this is my friend Sandy. Everyone knew what it was about and the audience filled in the gaps..... Today they push down barriers. Take the f word. Its become commonplace. Stephen Fry - Im a great fan and think hes clever - puts up a good argument for using all swearwords as a rich part of our language. But he couldnt persuade me. Language has implications and its offensive if its meant to denigrate something or someone..... The most important thing for me is that I can sit back and watch it with my ten-year-old daughter, Sophie, without thinking, Whoops, why did they say that? Oh blimey - and then unable get to the off knob fast enough. I try to protect what she sees on television, but you cant. Take the adverts: I was watching SpongeBob, a favourite cartoon of ours, but suddenly a scent advert came on with this girl stripping off as she walks towards the camera. Its done for mums but they forget a lot of girls are watching these powerful images. There wasnt much on telly the other night so with Sophie and her friend we watched Laurel and Hardy, made in the 1930s, and these kids laughed like drains. Thats humour - doing what funny people have done since comedy began without being edgy and pushing boundaries.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 06:55:39 +0000