Dogwash

Midsomer Murders creator suspended after race remarks

Read it and weep, or possibly boggle, or make yourself a hot bacon sarnie, as you prefer.

And right on cue, a localish rag wheels out the readily offended

One of Slough’s leading Muslims, businessman Nazar Lodhi, said the remarks amount to racial incitement and that he would contact the police.

Bollocks. Go on, Nazar, admit it mate; you've never even heard of the fucking programme, never mind watched it. If Phil Space of the Maidstone* Masturbator and Kebab Wrapper hadn't got in touch and wound you up about it, you'd have been none the wiser.

Incidentally, how do you get to be a "leading Muslim"? Is there an exam? Is there a career path? You know: leading Muslim, senior Muslim, chief Muslim.

From the Mediaspy piece:

A 2006 study commissioned by the British Film Institute found that British television had consistently failed to engage with ethnic minorities. One of the series singled out for its "strongly white, middle-England associations" was Midsomer Murders, which was described as "strikingly unpopular" among people from minority backgrounds.

To be honest, I'm not a regular listener to the BBC Asian Network, either. And you know what? I never watched a single episode of Nai Zindagi, Naya Jeevan in the 1970s. But I've never complained about their lack of ethnic balance. Should I have done, then?


I have a modest suggestion which might just restore the proper balance and resolve this major crisis in community relations. Why not dramatize Agatha Christie's Ten Little Niggers, under the original title and with actors of the ethnicity suggested by the title, and screen it alternate weeks with the next series of Midsomer Murders?

Happy now?

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* Er, or possibly Maidenhead. Oh the shame, the shame. (Manfully resists temptation to crack lubricious joke about Madonna, or a racist joke about the heavenly reward of the shahidin.)