ON THE RADIO

ONLY men of a certain age will remember Whitehouse magazine. And few of them would admit to it. Whitehouse was launched in 1974 by David Sullivan, current joint chairman of West Ham United and, back in the 1970s (and for many a year after), publisher of pornography.

Whitehouse was a title that cocked a snook at Mary Whitehouse, moral campaigner and scourge of TV executives, cinema managers, theatre directors and the odd pornographer.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, Mary Whitehouse was a contributor to the cultural conversation, lambasting everything from Doctor Who to the National Theatre in her self-appointed role as the country’s moral watchwoman. And probably every year since her death in 2001 a commentator, triggered by the latest example of bad taste on TV, will ask: Did she have a point?

Last Saturday, Samira Ahmed was the latest to do just that on Archive on 4 (Radio 4). “I grew up with the idea of Mary Whitehouse as a puritanical harridan permanently disgusted and obsessed with sex on TV,” Ahmed explained at the start of this hour-long retrospective. Having immersed herself in the Whitehouse archive, however, she said, “I want to show you a Mary Whitehouse who is not a harpy but a devoutly Christian Cassandra warning of a destructive tsunami of digital porn to come.”

What followed was an examination of Whitehouse’s background, her beliefs and, in particular, her pursuit of private prosecutions against Gay News and Michael Bogdanov, director of the controversial Howard Brenton play The Romans in Britain.

Along the way emerged a picture of Whitehouse the human being rather than the harridan, a woman who liked watching snooker and darts on the telly, who rather enjoyed being the centre of attention and who believed in her cause and wasn’t put off by the death threats and the occasional need for police protection.

Ahmed pointed out that it was Whitehouse’s lobbying of Tory MPs that helped create The Protection of Children Act 1978 which criminalised making indecent images of children. But Whitehouse also suggested that homosexuality was a sin.

And she couldn’t see that the supposed pillars of moral authority – whether that be schools or churches or the law – were more than capable of moral rot too. The lawyer who led her blasphemy case against Gay News was, it turned out, a serial abuser of young boys.

On Monday evening Andrew Marr started his new show on LBC. The presenter has said he was looking forward to not having to stick to strict BBC guidelines and speaking out a bit more. I’m not sure he’ll have time if this first programme is anything to go by. So many items and ads and trailers, and not enough time. With every interview you got the sense of Marr chivvying things along to get to the next thing.

That said, at one point he asked John Sweeney in Kyiv why the reporter was still in the besieged city. “I’m 63 …” Sweeney began. “You might not make 64,” Marr suggested. Maybe taking being outspoken too far?

Listen Out For

Our Friends in the North, Radio 4, Thursday, 2.15pm. A radio version of one of the great TV dramas of the last 30 years.