Woke madness as sketch comedy The Fast Show slapped with trigger warning by BBC over infamous scene
NINETIES sketch comedy The Fast Show has been given trigger warnings by the BBC — including for one of its infamous Suit You Sir scenes.
The Corporation has flagged up two episodes of Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson's classic series on iPlayer for using 'discriminatory language'.
One is for episode five of series three, which aired in December 1997.
It is most likely for a sketch featuring the outspoken tailors asking a customer if they would like to have sex with a 'she-male', with the customer then declaring: 'Come on you tr*nnies!'
Episode one of the second series, from February 1996, also has a warning.
That is likely due to a scene featuring the Middle Aged Guys who declare two women who rebuff their advances 'lesbians'.
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The BBC does not indicate which scenes their trigger warnings apply to. But the notes could also be for the beloved Chanel 9 News skit — delivered with fake Spanish word including 'Scorchio'.
All 25 episodes of the Bafta winning show are on iPlayer.
The trigger warnings come after the
In February, Channel 4 was branded 'humourless' for flagging a series of Father Ted episodes on its streaming service.
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Regulators also hit Graham Linehan's Bafta-winning sitcom
And ITV has slapped 1970s comedy George & Mildred with a similar caution.
Dr Who gone Woke
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Comedians Mark Williams and Paul Whitehouse in The Fast Show
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Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
The days of families huddling around the Late Late Show or Glenroe are gone - and that's no bad thing
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The entire saga of the Doctor's rumoured demise and the character's bombshell resurrection in the guise of the former Because We Want To chart-topper passed without comment – in contrast to the widespread anguish that had attended the cancelling of the series for the first time in 1989. Billie Piper in the final episode of Doctor Who. Photograph: James Pardon/Bad Wolf/BBC Studios Such has been the pattern in recent decades – and not just in the context of time-travelling British eccentrics. Contrast the present-day television landscape with that distant time when The Late Late Show on RTÉ ranked as unmissable viewing. Or what about Montrose's perpetually okay-ish soap opera Fair City, which once held the entire nation in its thrall - including when it aired Ireland's first on-screen kiss between two men in 1996. Or in November 2001, when 800,000 viewers tuned in to the soap to see abusive sociopath Billy Meehan beaten to death by the son of his partner, Carol. People were talking about it at the bus stop and in the pub (back when the pub was a place we frequented in numbers). Even if you wanted to, you couldn't get away from bad Billy and his bloody exit. READ MORE Those days are clearly long over. According to RTÉ, some 280,000 people watch Fair City each week (with more tuning in on RTÉ Player). But when last did you hear someone discuss a Fair City plotline – or even acknowledge its existence? It's still out there, and fans still enjoy it, but to the rest of us, it's gone with Billy in the grave. The fracturing of television audiences has long been a source of dismay to those who care about such matters. In 2019, Time Magazine fretted that the end of Game of Thrones would be 'the last water cooler TV show'. That same year, author Simon Reynolds despaired of the great geyser of streaming TV and how it had deprived us of unifying cultural milestones. With so much entertainment jetting into our eyeballs, how is it possible for any of us to hold dear any particular film or show? 'There is,' he wrote in the Guardian, 'always something new to watch… an endless, relentless wave of pleasures lined up in the infinite Netflix queue.' More recently, Stephen Bush wrote in the Financial Times that 'everywhere in the rich world, the era of truly 'popular culture' is over'. This, he posited, 'is bad news for modern states, which are held together to some extent by the sense that we are all part of a collective endeavour ... the decline of shared viewing is eroding shared cultural reference points'. The death of monoculture is generally presented as a negative. Weren't we all better off in the old days, when Biddy and Miley's first kiss in Glenroe held the nation transfixed, and the big reveal as to who shot JR was a global news event that pushed trivialities such as the Cold War off the front pages? But is that such a loss? 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Irish Daily Mirror
4 hours ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Tony Blair believes Bob Geldof and Bono saved millions of lives
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Blair fully credits Geldof with getting him to champion African debt relief, while George W Bush recounts how Bono persuaded him to pledge $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa following a gift of an Irish bible and an exchange on sins of omission. In the series, Live Aid at 40: When Rock N Roll Took On The World, Bush recalls his 2005 meeting with Bono and Geldof ahead of the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. "I didn't have a clue who Geldof was. He and Bono came in, and Bono, was at least somewhat presentable, Geldof looked like he crawled out from underneath the ground', he says with a chuckle before adding, 'But he was a good guy. He cared deeply." Blair's former advisor, Justin Forsyth, explains their contrasting styles. 'Bob was effing this and effing that, even with presidents and prime ministers and Bono had this kind of deep empathy with people and knew how to kind of appeal to their inner souls.' Bob puts it in typically blunt fashion: 'He wants to give the world a great big hug, and I want to punch its lights out.' At the beginning of the series, Geldof speaks about the kitchen table conversation with his late wife, Paula Yates, which began Live Aid, recording the Band Aid single, and explaining who Status Quo were to a bemused Prince Charles during the concert. He also admits he was mistaken about not wanting Queen to play at the global concerts, regarding them as an 'overblown operatic' act. 'Subsequently, of course, we all have to admit that we thought the songs were great, so with age, we're allowed to admit it.' Meanwhile, Lionel Richie said he wasn't sure why US superstars like Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder didn't perform. For his own part, he said: 'I made a conscious decision at the very last minute to get on the plane and go because I just felt it was necessary to do it.' In the final episode of the series, Geldof reflects on his subsequent campaign to get debt relief in Africa began when he returned to an orphanage in Ethiopia in 2003, nearly two decades after Band Aid. 'I see these children whose parents have died because of no food. It annoys me to tears of frustration. I go ballistic at this point, as ever, and 'Get me Downing Street' Blair, at a G8 summit in Évian-les-Bains at the G8 summit, took the urgent call from an aide. 'I remember shouting, 'it's happening again'', said Geldof. In a subsequent meeting, the British prime minster agreed to head a Commission for Africa after Geldof set out the case for the world's poorest countries had to be freed from crippling debt. 'I wouldn't have reacted that way at anyone, but it was him with his track record, his commitment, his knowledge, his dedication. And therefore, it made sense', said Blair. Blair's aide, Kate Garvey, recalls: 'He was driving the agenda inside government, which was incredible.' When Blair decided to raise debt relief at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, he knew it was critical to persuade Bush. 'The relationship was a very close relationship. We were in constant conversation with each other, and I thought there was a chance, because we had formed this commission that Bob (Geldof)had asked us to do.' They also had the backing of Bono, who had already formed an unlikely alliance with the Bush administration when he got access to Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor, who was a 'huge fan' of U2, soon after his election. Although she says in the documentary that Bush's tastes went 'toward country music'. As he's been briefed by his Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Joshua Bolten, Bush smiles as he recalls his aide asking him, 'You do know who Bono is, don't you?' He replied: 'Yeah, he married Cher'. But Bono found common ground when he brought along an 'ancient Irish bible' as a gift to the White House, as he knew Bush was a 'man of faith' 'He surprised me by giving me a Bible. I don't think this was a way to make me like him. I think is the way he really wanted to share with me a part of his being", Bush said. During their religious discussion at the start of the meeting, Bono asked him if there was a hierarchy to sin. 'He gave me the best answer anyone ever gave. He said, 'the sin of omission'', recalled Bono. This was taken as meaning it was wrong not to do anything. Bono wanted the US administration to take action on the AIDS pandemic, which was seeing 6000 Africans a day die of a preventable, treatable HIV disease. 'I'm being informed that there's a pandemic destroying an entire generation of people on the continent of Africa at the time that I'm the president, which I consider the most generous nation in the world, and we're doing nothing about it. It struck my heart', said Bush. Around a year later, in his State of the Union address, Bush pledged an incredible $15 billion over the following five years to 'turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean.' 'Bono got George Bush to give $15 billion to black people who don't vote, who have AIDS', said Bobby Shriver, co-founder of DATA, Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa, along with Bono. Bono said PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is the largest health intervention in the history of health interventions. 'It has saved 26 million lives'. In the programme, the lack of diversity of the rock acts in the charity concerts is debated with Harvey Goldsmith, the concert promoter behind Live Aid and Live8 concerts: 'There's always a criticism about not being enough black acts. I didn't care whether they were black, brown, green or yellow, if they were a big act and they were great and they wanted to play great', he says. But Bono does think it could have been more inclusive of the African continent. 'We did our best to make it more involving of African acts and failed, we f**ked up', he said, referring to the Live8 gigs. He later says, "Getting this stuff right is really hard because you are essentially raising an alarm." At the start of the G8 summit, a few days after the Live 8 concerts, aides recall how Blair rushed back to London from Scotland when he was told of the July 7th bombings in London. When the exhausted British leader arrived back towards the end of the summit, Blair's advisor, Justin Forsyth, says he had little patience with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who was holding up agreement on Africa. 'He went down into the bar with all the leaders there, and their wives. I remember him, not to exaggerate, but he had Schroeder up against the wall, saying, you know, 'we've got to do this deal, aren't we, (Gerhard)?' And at that moment, I think Schroeder gave in, and we got across the line with the Germans.' The G8 leaders agreed to immediately cancel $40 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries, and promised to increase aid to developing nations by $50 billion a year by 2010. Blair remembers it as the 'most extraordinary weekend' during his time as prime minister. 'To be frank, even President Putin played his part in that', he says, adding, 'It was probably one of the last moments of truly global solidarity that I can remember.' He remembers being fed up with criticism from NGOs that it hadn't gone far enough. 'They ask you to do something, you do it, and they still criticise, and Bob and Bono just weren't like that at all.' Kumi Naidoo, one of the critics, had mixed feelings. 'I think there were very many good people with good intentions that were involved both with Live Aid and Live8. 'I think that there was not enough sensitivity to understanding that it's not right for a bunch of predominantly white male folks to get together and say, 'we got to frame a continent like this'.' At the end of the documentary, the U2 frontman fears the 40th anniversary of Live Aid will have a very different resonance for global aid. 'The 20th anniversary was just a convergence of good fortune and good actors on the world stage. But what's happening now in politics means this anniversary could be a funeral for the last 40 years.' Live Aid at 40: When Rock N Roll Took On The World will be shown on Sunday, July 6th, with the first episode starting at 21.00 on BBC Two, and it will also be on BBC iPlayer. The Irish Mirror's Crime Writers Michael O'Toole and Paul Healy are writing a new weekly newsletter called Crime Ireland. Click here to sign up and get it delivered to your inbox every week
The Irish Sun
9 hours ago
- The Irish Sun
Glastonbury fans left fuming as show is pulled off air in technical blunder
GLASTONBURY fans have been left fuming as the show is pulled off air in a huge technical blunder. Music enthusiasts wanted to tune into the BBC and their iPlayer streaming service to watch the latest from Worthy Farm. Advertisement 5 The BBC's Glastonbury coverage has been plagued by technical blunders Credit: PA 5 The BBC was forced to apologise on screen as it suffered a huge technical blunder 5 Many viewers complained that they missed out on watching the Scissor Sisters perform (pictured in Denmark) Credit: AP If you wanted to watch the likes of The BBC coverage of the 2025 Glastonbury Festival has been dogged by technical errors. Even at the festival itself, During a set on Advertisement READ MORE ON GLASTO And it's no better online for those watching iPlayer as the main Saturday feed also suffered from a huge technical difficulty. Those wanting to watch Scissor Sisters were greeted with an apology message that was emblazoned on the screen. It read: "Sorry for the interruption. We're working to fix this." Glasto fans flooded social media in their droves as they were left fuming by the blunder. Advertisement Most read in News TV Writing on X - formerly known as Twitter - one expletive-filled fan fumed: "F****** hell @BBC you cut Blossoms short and now Scissor Sisters when it's just a black screen. Sort it out." A second stated: "Scissor Sisters have been on stage 8 minutes and the screen is still black! Fury as Glastonbury crowd chants 'death to the IDF' during Bob Vylan set aired live on BBC "I've only wanted to watch them, Jade, and "#Glastonbury Jeez put up with watching that Winehouse wannabe Raye screen goes blank for Scissor Sisters," exclaimed an angry user. Advertisement While a fourth asked: "Having to watch Charli because no streams on iplayer I don't even know what she sings #Glastonbury." " Cmon BBC Iplayer…where's Charli xcx? ", enquired someone else. Glastonbury backlashes Glastonbury Festival has been going for 54 trailblazing years - but at times it has been a stormy ride Here, we look at the biggest backlashes to hit the iconic music event. The Smiths (1984): One of the first bands to divide the early Glastonbury purists were Manchester indie stars The Smiths. The band's set even sparked a full scale stage invasion as they introduced the crowd to their guitar-driven, post-punk romanticism music. Guitarist Johnny Marr described their usual fanbase as "cup final supporters", adding: "Eventually, I did manage to instigate a stage invasion, which raised a few eyebrows. One fan was trying to climb on stage, I helped pull him up, and then a few more people followed, and all of a sudden we'd managed to turn it into a Smiths gig." The Fence (2002): It wasn't a band or musician that sparked controversy in 2002... it was a fence. Organiser Michael Eavis came under fire when he organised the erection of a £1million fence around the site. The ring of steel was brought in to protect ticket holders and those who might inadvertently endanger themselves by breaking in. Diehard Glasto fans, however, felt it was at odds with the event's hippy ethos of peace and love. Eavis and co refused to back down, though, and the fence remains in place today. JAY-Z (2008): Despite its long history, Glastonbury had never welcomed a rapper for a headline set - until 2008. Jay-Z's top bill booking was met with a flurry of digs, including some from Oasis's Noel Gallagher, who claimed hip hop had no place at the festival. In a perfect clap-back, Jay-Z walked out to a version of Wonderwall before launching into his powerful hit 99 problems. Seven years later, his pal Kanye West followed in his Glastonbury footsteps and topped the bill. Metallica (2014): Thrash metal rockers Metallica were met with raised eyebrows when they were announced as Glastonbury headliners. Some critics claimed they lacked mainstream appeal, while others felt they were past their prime. However, frontman James Hetfield managed to quickly win the crowd round thanks to his good humour and polite manners. Adele (2016): Although Adele wowed both festival goers and music fans at home with her headliner set, the British songstress did cause a stir by turning the air blue. She warned the crowd about her "potty mouth" but not everyone was impressed with with the 30 plus expletives she dropped on the stage during her headline set, which aired on the BBC. And a sixth added: " Since iPlayer is so useless this weekend you only have what's on BBC One and Two of #Glastonbury ." On iPlayer, if you wanted to catch the action from The Other Stage, you would have to swap to the dedicated feed which was still working. Advertisement 5 Viewers would have had to switch to a dedicated feed for The Other Stage on iPlayer to watch Charli XCX perform (pictured in 2022) Credit: Redferns 5 Fans took to social media as they complained in droves Credit: Rex Features
