Oh Carol
By Graham Davies

I hate Political Correctness. It is often used as a weapon to stifle people with diverse opinions or an original sense of humour.

However, what is acceptable in language evolves all the time. In 1943, Wing Commander Guy Gibson had a black dog called ”Nigger”. Gibson was the leader of the Dam Busters mission, and he used the name of his dog as the code word to signal the successful breach of the Mohne dam. He radioed it back to base at 1.00am on May 17th 1943. Seven years later, it was still deemed perfectly acceptable as the reference survived intact into the Dam Busters film. When Channel 4 screened the film in 2007, the term had been cut.

In the 1970s, when Britain was still sodden with racism, "Golliwog" was in common usage. It wasn't until the 1980s that it began to be deemed offensive, and Robertsons (most famously associated with the term) capitulated to public pressure, at least partially: the Robertsons Golliwog became the Robertsons Golly. 20 years later, they finally dropped the Golly from their branding altogether. It was too long a time in coming.

Carol Thatcher is a highly experienced broadcaster and presenter. Casually describing a tennis player as a "golliwog" to a group of people in the Green Room after a BBC TV show was utterly crass. Whatever her personal opinions on issues of race, and however much she likes to protest that this was just wry humour (?), there are three lessons to be drawn from this:

(1) You might have the good fortune to be presenting on TV, you might not. Regardless, some words are horribly offensive

(2) No conversation anywhere near a TV studio is ever going to be private

(3) Even if you find this kind of language funny, using it out loud will permanently damage your Presentational Brand. This is particularly true of presenters with ex-Prime Ministers for mothers.