Hoorah for the Big British Castle!

Image by Pip via FlickrIt's quite refreshing to see that Charlie Brooker's fears about 'an increase in BBC jumpiness' following the irritatingly nicknamed 'Sachsgate' incident might actually be unfounded. The BBC Complaints website, still reeling from the charge of the Daily Mail High Horse Idiot Brigade, features a pleasing level of common sense in their responses:

Complaint

We've received complaints from viewers who were unhappy about a joke that featured in Mock the Week...Again on Wednesday 29th October 2008.

The BBC's response

Mock the Week is a well-established satirical comedy series whose audience has very clear expectations of its bold and sometimes provocative humour. This edition of the programme has been broadcast four times since January 2007 and before the recent press coverage we'd only received a very small number of complaints about it. We're always clear with audiences about the content of programmes and we acknowledge that some of the humour in Mock the Week is not to everyone's taste, particularly when taken out of the context of the programme.

Do I even detect a hint of rebuke there? I can't really fault that response, other than that they forgot to mention that Frankie Boyle's comment was vomit-inducingly hilarious. It's good to see that the BBC have decided not to cave in and pander to the outraged morons, including the ones who recently complained that Dizzee Rascal was an 'inappropriate guest' for Newsnight- the result may have been the subject of more justified controversy, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't have happened; as far as I'm concerned anything that provokes valid debate is worth broadcasting. I guess we can only hope that these sensationalist little parasites will get bored and crawl back into the sordid holes they emerged from until such a time as a cure for unabashed self-righteous idiocy is found.

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