Thread: Filth:The Mary Whitehouse story

Did anyone watch Filth:The Mary Whitehouse story?
Had a bit of a stink of a hatchet job! I mean she was very educated and clever but the program showed her saying things such as, 'Have you heard of oral sex?' to her husband. Firstly how do they know what went on between them, secondly a lot of women in those days probably never.

Anyone who is against the BBC can not be all that bad!

Broadcasting standards campaigner Mary Whitehouse has died aged 91. She passed away at the Abberton Manor Nursing Home in Colchester, Essex, after a long illness. BBC News Online takes a look at her life.
To some she was the guardian of Christian family values, to others a self-appointed busybody.
For more than 30 years, Mary Whitehouse led the charge of the middle-class moralists to purge the "poison being poured into millions of homes through television".
Acting on the principles of a "dedicated school teacher and a committed Christian", she organised the first meeting of her Clean Up TV Campaign with a friend in 1964.
A total of 37 coachloads of supporters filled Birmingham Town Hall, and Whitehouse's notoriety among the liberal establishment was assured.
Whitehouse's crusade began in Birmingham



She complained vehemently of the increasing "blasphemy, bad language, violence and indecency" she saw on television, and became the first General Secretary of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association in 1965.
This was no one-woman crusade. The Association boasted policemen and bishops among its patrons, and 400,000 supporters.
She was the scourge of the "permissive society", and pilloried by the media, whom she in turn attacked. Her chief target in the early 1960s was the BBC.
She was offended by its Wednesday Play, by the emerging late-night satire and by the increasing freedom of material enjoyed by BBC producers under director-general Sir Hugh Greene.
Whitehouse considered the racist humour of Til Death Us Do Part to be "entirely subversive to our whole way of life".
Lawsuit
She was happy to fight for the benefits of censorship in the courthouse.
In 1974, she launched an unsuccessful lawsuit against a cinema manager for showing the violent thriller Blow-Out.
But she emerged the victor from court in 1977, after suing the Gay News for blasphemous libel.
Five years later, Whitehouse appeared on the verge of winning a private prosecution for a homosexual rape scene in the National Theatre play Romans in Britain.
She suddenly withdrew her case, happy to have made her point and uninterested in the prospect of a conviction.

Whitehouse enjoyed much popular support


Her influence on the setting up of the Broadcasting Standards Council in 1988 was acknowledged by its first chairman, Lord Rees Mogg, who credited her with helping ensure "the public view was always taken into account".
Tainted with an image of a blue-rinsed reactionary, Whitehouse endured years of abuse, stink bombs and pies in the face.
Even after she officially retired in 1994 and later moved into a nursing home, she continued to vent her spleen into her nineties on what she called the crassness of the BBC, this time for omitting to televise part of the Queen Mother's 100th birthday celebrations.
In her book Whatever Happened to Sex, she explained that as a happy family woman she had nothing against sex, but against its exploitation in the media. And the Wolverhampton schoolteacher who bombarded Broadcasting House, Downing Street and Buckingham Palace in turn, always explained that her concerns were not those of a repressive patrician, but just "a manifestation of common sense and responsibility".

Please note!

Towards the end of the programme, Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story, Mary Whitehouse is shown dictating a complaint to the BBC about Pinky and Perky, the children's puppet show popular in the 1960s. We have investigated the truth of this and Trevor Hill, who produced Pinky and Perky, confirms that she made a complaint but NOT about Pinky and Perky!

(The complaint), Mr Hill said, "was about a sexy Siamese kitten on the programme called Peaches Puss who mimed to a speeded up record of Eartha Kitt (get the connection with kitten?) swinging her tail round as she did so. Mary felt it portrayed coloured people in an unfavourable light and objected on that basis."

John Beyer, director of mediawatch-uk, said, "We know that the main source for this programme was Mary's book 'Cleaning Up TV: From Protest to Participation' and so it curious that some of the other complaints made about programmes, such as, Up The Junction, Its Dark Outside, 'Til Death Us Do Part and That Was The Week That Was, were not mentioned at all. It is even more curious that Mary's remarks in the Birmingham Town Hall about the social impact of screen violence were also omitted."

Totally biased, much hyped portrayal of her highness Mary Whitehouse. Somebody did need to rein it in a bit, otherwise we would have rampant sexual content at all hours of day and night. It seems a bit dated nowadays, but she did stop some programmes from happening in their original format, and that led indirectly to the situation we find ourselves in now, where programmers stop and check, before, just randomly issuing the programme regardless of moral scrutiny.... In hindsight I can see she did actually do some good, although she was a bit of a martyr to the cause, and that annoyed me at the time....

ERTHA KITT AGAIN,I,M A BLOODY MIND READER..BOY

Thats the thing dated now but not then. 60's drugs etc. I must admit Mr Jonathan Woss bugs me as every two mins is the F word! Not to mention Ramesey's 'The F word'!

PINKY AND PERKY WERE OUTRAGEOUS,THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN MADE TO DO NATIONAL SERVICE AND BIRCHED,THAT WOULD HAVE MADE MEN OUT OF THEM...SURE SCREWED THIS BOY UP..BOY

Thats the Jewish members upset!

Originally Posted by foghorn

PINKY AND PERKY WERE OUTRAGEOUS,THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN MADE TO DO NATIONAL SERVICE AND BIRCHED,THAT WOULD HAVE MADE MEN OUT OF THEM...SURE SCREWED THIS BOY UP..BOY

Is this what they mean.....when they say .....when pigs fly?

She's been rubbing 'oinkment' on her chest boom, boom!