Entertainment For Lively Minds
Oi, Oi. BBC postpone (BAN) Dury Radio Documentary!
Can't believe this. I posted yesterday there was to be an Ian Dury documentary on Radio 6 on Saturday night. Now the BBC have put a stop to it. This is a message from the Blockheads website.
29 years ago "Spasticus Autisticus" was banned by the BBC. The lyric was deliberately provocative as the word Spastic, a name for sufferers of cerebral palsy, was becoming taboo in Britain due to its use as a derogatory term. Despite the fact that Ian Dury was himself disabled (from polio, rather than cerebral palsy), the BBC deemed it offensive to polite sensibilities and denied it airplay, only confirming the validity of Ian's uncompromising lyrics. It is unfortunate and ultimately pathetic to report that the BBC, in 2010, has seen fit to pull tomorrow's broadcast of a documentary about Ian Dury and The Blockheads due to the inclusion of over a minute of "Spasticus" in the show. Well done Beeb! You haven't changed a bit. Ian would not be amused...we certainly aren't.
We'll report back when we know more... In the meantime here is a history lesson that the BBC obviously missed...
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I feel I can only say
arseholes, bastards fucking cunts and pricks
Am gonna go see the S&D&RnR film tomorrow. Heard a clip on the Mayo n Kermode show and Serkis has got the singing down to a T
Amazing. Can this be linked
Amazing.
Can this be linked to all these football pitches today being playable but 'Health & Safety' decreeing that the outside of the grounds are too dangerous.
Please, I might WANT to be insulted by Ian Dury and, if I fall arse over tit outside a football ground, so be it!
I couldn't agree more...
Personal responsibility? What's that?
Dont get me started
on Health and Safety. In my eyes this was always the beginning of State Control over our lives. My thoughts were that they would soon start telling us what we could see, read, listen to. Looks like it has happened. I am usually quite impassive about things I have no control over but this particular issue puts me in a rage. For a so-called democracy it is a fucking joke.
You couldn't make it up
Mind how you go
DON'T BLAME STATE CONTROL
If you want to blame anyone try the ambulance chasers who clog up town centres every Saturday, enquiring whether you've had an accident lately.
It's because of these shysters that schools now close as soon as a snowflake falls and that football matches are posponed when there's the slightest frost on the ground.
It just goes to show...
You can't be too careful.
Somebody somewhere
is pissing themselves laughing.
Not entirely unrelated to the Ross resignation
I wouldn't say it's a nanny state, rather the BBC have bowed to a certain type of public pressure in recent years in order to neuter anything with the slightest chance of causing offence. The difficulty is who to be vocal about this kind of censorship when it's so easy for the offende ones to make noise.
While we're complaining, I wish the radio would stop telling me what's prerecorded. I'm not an idiot.
Commercial promotion
I imagine that this doc could be viewed as shameless promotion for the Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll film that was released yesterday since it is narrated by that films star Andy Serkis.
The documentary can be put on when the film finishes its run.
You think it's not about the money?
This is a naive view, of course,
based upon an emotional reaction to an artist I have long admired, and you are welcome to knock me back on that basis, but as far as I'm concerned, anything that might cause people to listen to Ian's songs and think about them is something the BBC should be spending my licence fee on.
It's now listed to be on
Broadcast
Sat 16 Jan 2010
22:00
do think people may have jumped the gun
with their outrage here as I've seen clips of Ian Dury singing this on the BEEB before presumably it's being shown in conjunction with the film that's coming out.
Shit Saturday
Bollocks! My footie's been cancelled and now this...
the snows pretty though chin up
True...
I'm off for a walk along the Thames with my missus and my camera so I guess things could be worse!
Will listen to the Blockheads on return and boycott the BBC for the whole weekend...errr, no decent music programmes on BBC 4 are there..???
Blimey
"I'm off for a walk along the Thames with my missus and my camera so I guess things could be worse!"
Is it really that cold or do you have superpowers?
As the mad genius Roky Erickson would say!
"I Got Levitation..."
Oi - its just rescheduled
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00q9j2r
As MichaelM says..its on next week. 10pm . Saturday 16th...6music. and #iplayer after that.
The billing reads
"Andy Serkis tells the extraordinary story of Ian Dury and the Blockheads - how a disabled art teacher in his mid-thirties fused punk, funk and incredible lyrics to create some of the most important music of the 70s. Friends and colleagues including Chas Jankell, The Blockheads, Suggs, Phill Jupitus and Ian's son Baxter reflect on a career of "sex, drugs and rock and roll", from the revolutionary "New Boots and Panties" through to Ian's early death and the legacy of the Blockheads as the band continue to tour."
Also BBC4 had this doc on Ian Dury last summer which included the track (i think)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074q3d
There's an archive Dury concert on 6music tonight.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qb1qy
Kermode/Mayo had Andy Serkis on yesterday. Front Row on Radio 4 reviewed the film on Thursday etc (Too much Dury - Ed)
Not even rescheduled
As far as I can tell (Radio Times...i work for the BBC but don't know anything about this apart from er, looking up stuff on the internet) then this was always scheduled for next Saturday anyway. Sigh.
The excellant clip
in the op says it all really. If you listen to the studio version at the end all the Blockheads respond to Ian's "I'm Spasticus" with "I'm Spasticus" it's quite brilliant.
I think we have next years anti X-Factor christmas song sorted, who wants to start the campaign now?
Excellent call.
Make a note in your diary now.