ONLY men of a certain age, I suspect, will remember Whitehouse magazine. And probably few of them would admit to it. Whitehouse was launched in 1974 by David Sullivan, economics graduate, current joint chairman of West Ham United and, back in the 1970s (and for many a year after), publisher of pornography.
Whitehouse was a title that cocked a snook (don’t read anything into that phrase) at Mary Whitehouse, moral campaigner and scourge of TV executives, cinema managers, theatre directors and the odd pornographers
From the 1960s to the 1990s Whitehouse was a regular contributor to the nation’s cultural conversation, lambasting everything from Tom & Jerry to the National Theatre in her self-appointed role as the country’s moral watchwoman.
And probably every year since her death in 2001 her name has been evoked by a media commentator who, triggered by the latest egregious example of bad taste on TV (Naked Attraction on Channel 4, anyone?) will wonder, did Mary Whitehouse have a point?
Last Saturday, Samira Ahmed was the latest to do just that on Disgusted, Mary Whitehouse, the latest Archive on 4 (Radio 4), which looked into Whitehouse’s archives at the Bodleian library.
“I grew up with the idea of Mary Whitehouse as a puritanical harridan permanently disgusted and obsessed with sex on TV,” Ahmed explained at the start of this hour-long retrospective. Having immersed herself in the Whitehouse archive, however, she said, “I want to show you a Mary Whitehouse who is not a harpy but a devoutly Christian Cassandra warning of a destructive tsunami of digital porn to come.”
What followed was an examination of Whitehouse’s background, her beliefs and, in particular, her pursuit of private prosecutions against Gay News and Michael Bogdanov, director of the controversial Howard Brenton play The Romans in Britain.
Along the way emerged a picture of Whitehouse the human being rather than the harridan, a woman who liked watching snooker, tennis and darts on the telly, who clearly rather enjoyed being the centre of attention and who believed in her cause and wasn’t put off by the death threats and the occasional need for police protection. She was funnier and smarter than her cartoon image.
But she was also a homophobic evangelist who saw moral rot in everything from Doctor Who to Pinky and Perky.
The case for the defence? Ahmed pointed out that it was Whitehouse’s lobbying of Tory MPs that helped create The Protection of Children Act 1978 which criminalised for the first time making indecent images of children.
Whitehouse’s social conservatism and evangelical Christianity, however, also saw her suggest that “perverted homosexual practices” were a sin.
And her obsession with the permissive society meant she couldn’t see that the supposed pillars of moral authority – whether that be schools or churches or the law – were more than capable of moral rot themselves. The lawyer who led her blasphemy case against Gay News was himself, it turned out, a serial abuser of young boys.
On Monday evening Andrew Marr started his new show on LBC. Since leaving the BBC, the presenter has been saying he was looking forward to not having to stick to strict BBC guidelines on objectivity and speaking out a bit more. I’m not sure he’ll have time if this first hour-long programme is anything to go by. So many items and ads and trailers, and not enough time. With every interview you got the sense of Marr chivvying things along to get to the next thing.
That said, at one point Marr asked John Sweeney in Kyiv why the reporter had decided to stay in the besieged city. “I’m 63 …” Sweeney began. “You might not make 64,” Marr pointed out, which was maybe taking being outspoken a little too far in the circumstances.
Listen Out For: Our Friends in the North, Radio 4, Thursday, 2.15pm. Do we need a radio version of one of the greatest TV dramas of the last 30 years? Let’s find out.
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