Breaking of a TV taboo
QUESTION Brendan Behan the first person to use the F-word on TV before Kenneth Tynan famously did?Was the Irish playwright
Brendan Behan was a talented author whose life was destroyed by drink. Born in inner-city dublin in 1923, at 16 he joined the Ira and embarked on an unauthorised solo mission to england to blow up the Liverpool docks.
he was arrested in possession of explosives and spent several years behind bars, which he later described in his autobiographical work Borstal Boy. On his release he began writing full-time.
Behan’s breakthrough came with his play The Quare Fellow, which premiered in London in May 1956. Theatre critic Kenneth Tynan proclaimed that he was fulfilling the Irish duty to ‘save the english theatre from inarticulate glumness’.
Behan had drunk a bottle of whiskey before arriving at the studio for his infamous, shambling BBC Panorama interview with Malcolm Muggeridge to promote the play.
It’s been claimed he used the F-word, but he was slurring so much and his accent was so strong that no one noticed, but this is probably the stuff of legend.
a 1965 article reported that Muggeridge had been given the instruction ‘no one is to laugh’ if the offending word were uttered and he was quoted as asking Behan: ‘You are not going to use any bad language, here, are you?’
Muggeridge recalled that he needed to carry on the interview with himself as Behan was ‘speechless’.
hundreds of viewers phoned the BBC to complain about Behan’s incoherent conduct. There was extensive Press coverage, an apology from Behan and protests over the BBC offering TV guests alcohol before broadcasts — resulting in extra publicity for the play.
as Behan’s fame increased, so did his drinking, despite the fact he had been warned it was dangerous for his health as he was a diabetic. he died in 1964 at the age of 41 after collapsing in a dublin bar.
Simon Morris, Loughborough, Leics. On nOVeMBer 13, 1965, theatre critic Kenneth Tynan took part in a live TV debate, broadcast as part of the late-night satirical show BBC-3. he was asked whether he would allow a play to be staged in which sexual intercourse was represented on the stage and replied: ‘Well, I think so, certainly. I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word “f***” would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden. I think that anything which can be printed or said can also be seen.’
There was a public outcry and the BBC was forced to issue an apology.
a male viewer in Swansea wrote to the BBC: ‘Last night in the privacy of my sitting room, a man employed by your Corporation uttered through the medium of a television broadcast . . . a foul obscenity which has never before been heard in my home, and I trust will never be heard again.’
anti-obscenity campaigner Mary Whitehouse commented: ‘I think Kenneth Tynan should have his bottom smacked,’ blithely unaware that such disciplining might not have been unwelcome. after his death, it was revealed that spanking had been Mr Tynan’s particular fetish.
But Tynan wasn’t the first to use the F-word on TV.
In 1959, the man with the Sisyphean task of painting the railings on Stranmillis embankment alongside the river Lagan in Belfast appeared live on Ulster Television’s teatime show roundabout.
Interviewer Ivor Mills asked if it was ever boring painting the same railings all year round. ‘Of course it’s f***ing boring,’ the man replied.
Will Graeme, Guildford, Surrey.
QUESTION Why are greyhounds so called despite being various colours?
A CARVING on an egyptian tomb that has been dated as 4,900 years old confirms the antiquity of the greyhound, though the modern breed is descended from the pure-bred stock developed for its speed in 18th-century Britain.
dna studies indicate that after being exported to mainland europe, greyhounds were brought to the British Isles by the ancient Celts.
By the time of the Saxons 1,000 years ago, they had become popular with commoners for hunting and among the upper classes for use in sport.
The ‘grey’ in greyhound has nothing to do with colour because it derives from the Saxon word grei, meaning fine or beautiful. Over time it’s likely the spelling changed to grey because it was a common colour among the dogs.
Though this breed of dog comes in other colours, such as white and red brindle, possible names such as fawn found, red hound or black brindle hound never caught on. Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts.
QUESTION What is the story of the colony in Pennsylvania established by the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull?
Further to the earlier answer, while the noted eccentric musician Ole Bornemann Bull impressed his audiences, especially the ladies, with his virtuoso performances in the 1830s and 1840s, his peers were less than impressed.
The eminent German violinist Ludwig Spohr notes that: ‘Bull’s polyphonic playing and his infallible left hand are remarkable but, like Paganini, he degrades his noble instrument with his tricks...he plays with feeling but not with taste.’
The violinist, conductor and musicologist Wilhelm Joseph von Wasiliewski went as far as to say: ‘. . . indeed, was this strongman neither a normal violinist nor a good musician in the true sense of the word.’
Part of Bull’s showmanship, and an indication of his vast wealth, was his decorated Stradivarius violin of 1687. This is now displayed in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. E. Felix Schondorfer, Stoke Poges, Bucks.
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