Having had the misfortune to listen to a local radio “debate” on last night’s BBC2 airing of “Jerry Springer: The Opera” while at work today, I thought I might offer some argument to the masses who called for the scheduled broadcast to be scrapped, and who are, after the broadcast, trying to hound the BBC still further.

I watched the last hour of the programme. It amused me in places, and as a piece of theatre was good, but overall I thought it was poor, like a great deal of American comedy. That, however, is not relevant. What is relevant is that the BBC received in excess of 45,000 complaints from prospective viewers before the show was even broadcast. To me that sounds like a whole lot of people “heard” bad things about the show and decided to voice their opposition to it. I sincerely doubt that the majority of those 45,000 complainants actually bothered to go out and see the stage production before passing judgement on it.

I heard a spokesperson from the BBC say the following:

“People say to us ‘why can’t you treat us like adults, it’s our choice, why don’t you let us choose what we see and hear?’”

Newsflash! Guess what? You do have a choice over what you see and hear! This choice manifests itself in a device known as a remote control. If you don’t like what’s on BBC2, why not change the channel, or better still, why not turn the TV off entirely and read passages from the Bible to your children, if you’re so worried about the preservation of Christian values. Nobody is standing in your front room with one of your infants in a headlock, forcing you to watch BBC2 at 10pm on a Saturday.

Then I hear that some Christian group is now threatening to take the BBC to court - the alleged offence? Blasphemy. There are a few points that can be raised here:

• There are hundreds, if not thousands, of programmes broadcast on both television and radio every single day that contain language conforming to the definition of blasphemy. That is “[the] defamation of God or gods, and by extension of gross irreverence towards any person or thing worthy of exalted esteem,” (source). Bear in mind especially that “Jerry Springer: The Opera” was broadcast at 10pm, one hour after the supposed watershed. There are not many programmes broadcast after 9pm that do not contain any instances of “blasphemy,” as defined above.


• The last successful prosecution for blasphemy in the UK was in 1977. That’s a full 28 years ago. Has society not moved on just a little since then?


• British law does not require that British citizens conform to Christianity. How, therefore, can someone be prosecuted for blasphemy against Christianity, when adoption of any non-Christian religion is blasphemy itself, according to the Bible?

Then of course there is the usual brigade of angry mothers, accusing the BBC of teaching their offspring bad language and so on. Point one: no child with any degree of self-respect is going to want to willingly watch anything with “opera” in the title. Point two: If you’re worried about your kids learning bad language, what are they doing staying up that late (10pm to 12 midnight) and watching TV, when the watershed is officially at 9pm? Stop blaming broadcasters for your own poor parenting. If you don’t want your kids learning bad language, forbid them from watching TV past 9pm. Any transgression on their part is your fault, not the fault of the broadcasters of the programmes that are not intended for children in the first place.