BBC London and its “sudden death” swearing policy
Last night I was listening to the late-night show on [BBC London](http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/tv_and_radio/radio/) hosted by [Jumoké Fashola](http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2005/06/02/lateshow_feature.shtml) who was talking about “modern icons” in response to a feature on so-called cultural icons on the BBC Culture Show (the successor to, if I remember rightly, the South Bank show). It had apparently been suggested that Bono was one such icon on account of his involvement in the [Make Poverty History](http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/) campaign. The caller said that he thought Bono was a prick, which prompted Fashola to cut him off and offer the regulatory apologies to anyone who was offended, despite the fact that she actually wanted to talk with him about another matter. This is not the first time such a thing has happened on this station.
The policy is applied nothing like consistently; on another occasion someone used the same word on Geoff Schumann’s show and was allowed to stay on, as was George Galloway, who was live in the studio, who said in response to some statement that now that the “watershed” was past (the “watershed” is 9pm, when swearing and other “adult” content is allowed on TV) that an idea he had heard was “bollocks”. He was not kicked off either. Generally, however, the station operates a “sudden death” policy by which anyone who swears is kicked off, and the presenter has to offer profuse apologies to “anyone who was offended” by the caller.
The worst such incident happened on the Eddie Nestor show on a Sunday morning, when a woman called in to say that she was dying of cancer as a result of a cannabis habit of several years. Obviously, this was a serious matter and one might gather that the woman was in very poor health and perhaps emotional distress also. She told Nestor that the cannabis made her *blasé* and that she would get to work and think “oh, fuck this”, at which point Nestor appeared to forget everything she had told him apart from that one F-word, cut her off, “apologised” and moved on, apparently forgetting that the woman had called. Clearly the fact that the fabled licence-fee payers were listening and wanted to hear what the woman had said did not matter: she had broken “the rules” and had to be cut off.
I’m not saying that BBC London should allow unrestrained swearing, especially during the daytime (although I should point out that, during the daytime, children are least likely to be listening), but I am getting sick of hearing people with points worth making being cut off because they slip out the odd F-word. After all, people of certain social backgrounds use language in common speech which those of “a certain class” would get shocked at (although in decreasing numbers, it must be said). Surely the presenters should be given some discretion about this, because it is us, the listeners, who are supposed to be the target audience and who pay for the BBC, not the intermediaries in the Corporation’s high ranks who (in what decade I know not) drew up these rules.
