Has PC gone Crazy? UKTV removes ‘don’t mention the war’ Fawlty Towers episode over racial slurs

‘The Germans’ episode has been temporarily removed from streaming service owned by the BBC and is ‘under review.’

The episode was first broadcast in 1975 and sees John Cleese’s cynical and snobbish hotel owner Basil Fawlty goose-stepping around, with fingers under his nose, shouting “don’t mention the war” in front of a group of bewildered visiting Germans.

Major Gowen, a regular guest at the hotel, uses very strong racist language in relation to an anecdote about the West Indies cricket team – he has been removed too.

It also contains scenes showing the Major Gowen character using offensive language about the West Indies cricket team, reportedly, these scenes have already started to be edited out by some broadcasters. Another clip coming under the knife is when John Cleese’s bigoted character is apparently shocked at being treated in the hospital by a black doctor.

The Black Lives Matter movement has resulted in more attention paid to such issues which is forcing media companies around the world to address racism within their organisations and in the output they produce and continue to publish.

Fawlty Towers – “The Germans” episode has been removed due to alleged racial slurs, many other programmes are being checked in the BBC archives.

The hit series, Little Britain, has been removed from its iPlayer catch-up service in the wake of scrutiny over the use of blackface by its stars, David Walliams and Matt Lucas, the follow-up show Come Fly With Me has also been taken down.

Netflix has pulled the BBC programmes Mighty Boosh and League of Gentlemen from its service due to them featuring instances of blackface and earlier this week the Oscar-winning film Gone With the Wind was temporarily removed from the US-based streaming service after protests over its depiction of slavery.

It is understood media companies all over the world are searching through archives and either editing or deleting any inferences of racial slur or scenes containing racism.

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Tony Winterburn

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