Whitehouse vs. The BBC
Perversely Topical
No, not that White House. But still topical because, coincidentally, Merlin Holland’s new book, Oscar Wilde, The Legacy of a Scandal, tells of a spat between another Whitehouse and the BBC—and a group of perverse individuals.
Anyone of a certain British vintage will associate the name of Mary Whitehouse with the righteous indignation of an evangelical teacher who became the self-appointed guardian of the country’s virtue.
As a campaigner and activist she attempted to stem the tide of the permissive society against what she saw as “the moral collapse in this country.” In particular, she had a longstanding vendetta against the BBC.
The story became relevant to Oscar Wilde when Whitehouse took exception to the BBC’s broadcasting for schools, which by 1971 she thought had become too lax. As a result, a cartoon appeared in the Daily Express mocking Whitehouse’s view of the BBC’s recruitment by showing a queue of famously transgressive archetypes applying for a job. Oscar Wilde could be seen standing in line as a “professor in homosexuality.”
The topicality is that in Merlin’s new book he records this episode (p. 448/9) in connection with his Mother who, in her turn, and protecting what she saw as the image of Oscar Wilde, wrote to the Daily Express to complain about the cartoon. This was part of several instances of her continuing and ultimately futile attempt to distance the family from the taint of Oscar’s “professorship”.
Mary Whitehouse did not get her way with the BBC; and Thelma Holland did not receive a reply from the Daily Express. By the 1970s, and years after the repeal of the law that had convicted Wilde, such rebuffing of prudery marked the end of an era of supposed innocence.
So in that permissive spirit (and for illustrative purposes only, of course), here is the cartoon in question. 😊
[In the cartoon, whatever is catching the eye of Casanova does not seem to interest Oscar. The lettering behind the line of deviant applicants is not part of the cartoon: it is a headline visible from the previous page about the former champion horse racing jockey Lester Piggott.]
© John Cooper, 2025.
Related:
Oscar Wilde, The Legacy of a Scandal (Europa Editions).
2025, pp. 700, Hardcover.
ISBN: 9781787705920
A well-crafted and insightful read that highlights the interplay between censorship, culture, and Wilde’s enduring legacy.
If you are scanning, or photocopying, from a newspaper you can reduce Lester Pigott type show-through by putting a black sheet behind the subject paper.
Good idea except that I wasn’t — the image is from an online archive who did the scanning. And spelling-wise your Pigott should have a GG of course 🙂