RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33965, 4 October 1975, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

THE GASMAN COMETH

Fashions change in what comprises the rude, off-colour, risque, blue, or objectionable word or expression — and all those adjectives in this context have gone in and out of fashion, too. Words which have recently come back into grace — this may mean almost any word not in the dictionary — were probably last in general use a couple of hundred years ago. Shaw made Eliza Doolittle say: “Not bloody likely!” for the first time just before what was earlier known as the Great War; the previous drawing-room acquaintance with such directness may have been on the eve of the Napolionic Wars. The greatest force moving today to bring daring words back to everyone’s

vocabulary is film — movie, of course, but television also. Television does more because the examples are less expected and, in spite of what anyone might say, it is almost impossible for a person to find himself unawares in a cinema seat in quite the same way as in his armchair at home. Of the television purveyors of the naughty phrase the greatest of these are the comics. Benny Hill is just the limit. It’s not the ones who set out to shock who have the strongest impact, otherwise Archie Bunker would have to make most of his programmes under house arrest. And with Dick Emery action speaks louder than words anyway.

What is most confusing, though, is when the comics turn a perfectly mentior.able expression into something unmentionable. Benny Hill recently did a piece about plumbers and their work, and when he referred to ’’motion” and '‘ball-cock” his popping eyes and twirling eybrows implied the bawdy worst. A most respectable Christchurch matron who had seen the programme had a report a few days later from a real-life plumber who said: “You’re O.K. now lady; you just had rust in your ball-cock” She really didn’t know which way to look. And on top of that her sister had reason to call the gasman. His diagnosis: “Your tubes just need a good blow.”