Why we all love to giggle at a bit of small-screen smut
From saucy Nigella to pottery innuendos, there’s been a resurgence of ribaldry on TV, says Michael Hogan
Titter ye not: good old-fashioned sexual innuendo has made an unlikely TV comeback. You might even say it has risen up and is standing proud again, as the 2010s have turned into the 1970s in fashion, in politics and now on telly, too.
Last week saw Simply Nigella, the erotically charged new series from notorious foodie flirt Ms Lawson. The domestic goddess raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at “dinkelbrot”, cooed at “the delicate, smooth flesh of avocado”, recalled how she “lived on breast as a student” and smirked that she “loved having an implement in each hand”. On sofas nationwide, brigadiers’ bow ties spun and sergeant majors’ monocles popped out. There were as many fruity-sounding phrases as there were pomegranate seeds sprinkled atop the food.
The very next night, also on BBC Two (currently rivalling Red Hot Dutch as the rudest channel on-air), arrived The Great Pottery Throw Down. Judge Kate Malone got the bawdy ball rolling by enthusing that pottery was “almost as good as sex”. An hour of earthenware earthiness ensued, with endless talk of “humping”, “rhythmic slapping” and “undulating bottoms”. Amid all the “shrinkage” and “expansion”, we were assured that “size matters”.
Proceedings reached peak innuendo with an entire round of “pulling handles”. Cameras lingered on female potters sensuously stroking hunks of clay. Presenter Sara Cox (her name virtually an innuendo in itself) sidled up to contestant Nigel as he did likewise and said: “You look quite at home there, in your own world. Does your wife ever…?” Regrettably, it turned out Mrs Nigel didn’t.
Throw Down is the Beeb’s latest bid to replicate The Great British Bake Off’s success. It has clearly borrowed the cake contest’s suggestive humour, as well as its format. So saucy was the opening episode that one magazine called it “Fifty Shades of Clay”.
Why the resurgence in ribaldry? The ancient art of innuendo goes back to Shakespeare, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and beyond, but came into its own as mass entertainment during the music hall days, when “blue” acts were essentially saucy seaside postcards on the stage. By the Sixties, this had transferred into the Carry On films (“Ooh, matron!”) and radio favourite Round the Horne – then on to TV, where the Seventies became the decade of double entendre, broadcast in beige smut-o-vision.
Benny Hill, Dick Emery and the Two Ronnies built entire sketch shows around nearly-but-not-quite mentioning sex. Sitcoms such as Up Pompeii!, On the Buses and Are You Being Served? (starring Mrs Slocombe’s pussy) were equally near the knuckle.
In the Eighties, alternative comedy put paid to such frippery. Although
there has been the odd ironic throwback since – see Viz comic’s Finbarr Saunders or The Fast Show’s “Suit you, sir” tailors – innuendo fell out of fashion for three decades. However, the past five years has seen a rebirth. Camp comedians like Alan Carr, David Walliams and Graham Norton are the spiritual descendants of Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd, while innuendo-stuffed hits Miranda and Mrs Brown’s Boys are the two top-rated sitcoms of recent years.
But it’s Bake Off that really raised the rudeness bar. The franchise has a winning formula and the cherry on top is its cheekiness. Inside the marquee, it’s a nudge-wink world of soggy bottoms, spotted dick, cream horns, dough balls, buns, baps and tarts. Things are stiffened, put in, then taken out. Not to mention that brief cutaway to a well-endowed squirrel that sent Twitter into meltdown during the 2011 final in what could well be seen as the show’s breakthrough moment. If only Mr Squirrel knew the power of his nuts.
Viewers delight in spotting innuendos (deliberate or, better still, inadvertent) and TV channels have caught on. It helps programmes build that all-important “buzz”. This week, despite relatively modest ratings of 2.3 million and 1.9 million respectively, both Nigella and Throw Down were trending on Twitter. Cynics might suggest that innuendo is a shortcut to make boring subjects more exciting, a way of smuggling jokes into ostensibly serious shows or adult material into the family schedules.
The BBC’s current obsession with twee, home-spun amateur contests has a nostalgic innocence that naturally lends itself to retro, risqué humour. What could be cosier and more quintessentially British than watching nice people excel at their hobby, while tittering at some mild, pre-watershed double entendre? In this cynical age, there’s something comforting about such harmless fun. It unites the generations, from granny to schoolboy, in gleeful giggling.
So Nigella and the potters, please keep it up. As the actress said to the bishop. You’re continuing a noble national tradition. Carry on being a bit Carry On.