2 days ago
Censorship was comical
Sir,– I was eight years old and it was 1954. The year that Seán Ó Faoláin was commenting on the powers that were and their criticism of crossroads dancing, V-necks, silk stockings and late dances.
To this list of debauchery was added mixed bathing and advertisements for female underwear.
And either close dancing or bikinis was a passport to hell.
One Sunday my mother arrived home from first Mass, in Lacken, with news.
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The curate, in a stentorian voice, had warned the congregation against 'turning over the pages of the rags of Fleet Street'.
Despite her less than perfect eyesight my poor mother managed to decipher the small print on the back pages of my Beano and Dandy which showed that they were printed at DC Thompson's outpost in Fleet Street. Dennis the Menace and The Bash Street Kids weren't actually banned from the house but my father reckoned it was 'the thin end of the wedge'.
My parents were unanimous in their belief that the relatively young curate was well qualified to set the moral compass for the youth of west Wicklow. And why wouldn't he; wasn't his father a guard in Bray? – Yours, etc,
MATTIE LENNON,
Blessington,
Co Wicklow.
