My old friend ‘Posh Ed’ Stourton begins his new book about political correctness (It’s a PC World, Hodder and Stoughton) with an anecdote about the Queen Mother. She told him, in private, that the EEC would never work, because of all those ‘Huns, Wops and Dagoes’. Ed was displeased: ‘I thought that what she had said was nasty and ugly.’ He thinks what upset him was that the ‘ghastly old bigot’ (a bit of ageism in that description?) was expressing racist sentiments. I choose to interpret the matter rather differently. What really shocked him, I suggest, is that the Queen Mother forgot two basic points of etiquette to observe when one has the privilege of talking to members of the BBC family. The first is that one must never use rough, colloquial words like ‘Dago’ in their presence. The other is that one must never, ever speak ill of the European Union. By failing to follow this pattern of deference which does so much to hold our social fabric together, the ex-Empress of India was committing lèse majesté. Ed is too well brought-up to mention it, but I expect she also failed to curtsy to him.
It is important to remember, however, that because the BBC family is above you, me and the Queen Mother, it is fine for them to use rude words to you. If they take your money by law in order to pay someone £6 million a year to ring up a grandfather and tell him that one of their stars has just ‘f***ed your grand-daughter’, you should feel honoured at attention from such a noble source and concede droit de seigneur without complaint. If, like Mock The Week, they make public jokes about your daughter’s sexual organs in old age (your daughter, in this case, being the Queen), you should, if you are alive, smile respectfully.
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