The censor police are at it again

Is it really necessary to slap all of our comedy classics with a warning?

- Dawn Neesom

It had to happen, didn’t it? When our only escape is having a giggle at something good on the box, the fun police decide to get involved. Latest to fall victim is the brilliant BBC show The Royle Family, which now has to be screened with a ‘woke warning’ that it contains discriminatory language.

I racked my brains to thinkwhat exactly, and could only come up with couch potato Jim’s classic catchphrase ‘My a**e’, which in the context it’s used in the classic 1998-2012 comedy series about a Manchester-based, TVobsessed clan, is a piece of perfectly scripted dialogue.

Written, of course, by the late, great and hugely talented Caroline Aherne, who also starred in the show. Aah, but she also crafted the line where grouchy Jim – played by Ricky Tomlinson – calls the host of Changing Rooms a ‘nancy boy’. Maybe it’s this?