TRANSCRIPT OF COMMENTS MADE BY BBC GOVERNOR RANJIT SONDHI
TO SEMINAR
"THE BBC LISTENS: CULTURAL DIVERSITY" HELD AT THE CARLISLE BUSINESS
CENTRE, BRADFORD, YORKS, 6th SEPTEMBER, 2000:-
"I remember listening to Fawlty Towers repeats and in one episode there is the use of the words "wogs" and "niggers", I think, and I thought to myself, this is a series I have grown to love over the years, it's one of the best comedies that I've ever watched and I think it's one of the great classics and yet it disturbed me to hear those words and similarly in other comedy programmes, sometimes on ITV, sometimes on BBC, you get those old programmes coming through with these rather offensive words. There's nothing you can do by appealing to history to lower that offence somehow, and I think we really have to do some vetting at the BBC around those issues."
TRANSCRIPT OF COMMENTS MADE AT THE SAME SEMINAR BY TONY HALL, DIRECTOR OF BBC NEWS AND DESCRIBED AT THE MEETING AS "THE BBC'S RACE CHAMPION":-
"There are layers of racial sensitivity and at one level Goodness Gracious Me or Rab C Nesbitt does indeed do that, but at another level it very consciously addresses those stereotypes openly and honestly and airs them in a healthy and arguably openly rather than constantly the conspiratorial silence of never mention, because "don't mention the war" is another repressed and dangerous culture as well."