Parents’ Worzel woes
Complaints at BBC reboot ‘littered with innuendos’
the BBC1 reboot has found legions of new fans along with older ones who chortled at its gentle humour as children.
But parents have hit out after the latest episode of Worzel Gummidge was ‘littered with sexual innuendos’.
Viewers spotted at least four jokes centred on suggestivesounding bird names that they said were unsuitable for young children. In one scene, grumpy farmer henry Braithwaite, played by Steve Pemberton, talks about his past hobby as a birdwatcher.
he says he lost out to a rival, who spotted a ‘red-knobbed coot’, leaving sister and brother Susan and John in hysterics. Fellow twitcher Lee Dangerman tells a news reporter he ‘travelled 350 miles to see a blue-footed booby’. Minutes later, during a Tv interview, he asks a female reporter: ‘have you ever seen a penduline tit?’, adding: ‘I have.’
In the episode on tuesday called twitchers, Worzel – played by Mackenzie Crook – is delighted when chough birds turn up at Scatterbrook Farm. however, birdwatchers then arrive and some viewers claimed t-shirts in the background of the scene had the words, ‘I was choughed at Scatterbook’ – said to be slang for having sex.
Former the Office star Crook, 50, wrote and directed the show. Mother-of-four Jodie Graham, 45, from Alnwick, Northumberland, said: ‘I usually love watching the new Worzel Gummidge episodes and my kids do too but I was a bit surprised about the twitchers one. they littered it with far too much sexual innuendo.’
Father-of-one Gavin taylor, 40, from Nottingham, said: ‘Worzel is a Christmas tradition in our house but the birdwatching episode was a bit too rude for a young audience. I felt the writers were going for cheap laughs.’ Crook revived the Tv classic – originally launched in 1979 starring Jon Pertwee – in 2019. the BBC refused to comment on the complaints, but said the twitchers episode was watched by 2.7million viewers.