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Nanny knows best

Charles Spencer

Wednesday, 24th September 2008

Although I waste a lot of time these days gazing longingly at advertisements for luxury cruises in the Daily Telegraph, I don’t think I could ever leave England for good.

Although I waste a lot of time these days gazing longingly at advertisements for luxury cruises in the Daily Telegraph, I don’t think I could ever leave England for good. A three-month cruise chasing the sun would be as long as I could bear to be away from home, and only then if I could take the cat Nelson with me as a cabin companion.

But if anything ever does drive me into exile, it will be the irksome British habit of bossiness that seems to have become so much worse under the present government. Did I dream it, or did I see a headline the other day in which Gordon Brown was telling us to close the curtains and turn off the lights as part of his new energy policy? What the hell has it got to do with him what we do with our lights and curtains?

Such, however, is the way to apoplexy. And it is a comfort to know that there is nothing new about British bossiness. I have just discovered a fascinating three-CD set, This Record Is Not to Be Broadcast (Acrobat Music), that compiles 75 songs banned by the BBC from 1931–57 and a snip at £10.48 from Amazon. It offers a fascinating, informative and sometimes hilarious cross-section of a variety of popular music recorded across three decades, from top-flight jazz to comic song, and from saccharine ballads to the raw new energy of rock’n’roll.

The compiler, Spencer Leigh, has done his homework, researching the reasons for the bans in the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham, and his fascinating sleeve notes and track-by-track documentation reveal that the BBC had a nannyish concern for the listener’s moral and spiritual welfare that would be touching if it weren’t so absurd.

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