English do Things Differently

Woe was me to glance at the headlines that appeared along with the Bunk with Basil article. Pluck of the Irish, How Bambi Fought the Viet Cong, You be illin' and Mind the Orgasms. Let's sample a little of that last one, shall we?

According to the right-wing Christian fundamentalist lobby in the US, the sexologist Alfred Kinsey was practically Satan's gatekeeper, responsible for the sexual revolution and heralding a new age of Sodom and Gomorrah. If so, nobody invited the bosses of London Underground to the orgy. They have proved as squeamish as choirboys in vetting "offensive" posters for the forthcoming film about Kinsey's life and achievements, starring Liam Neeson as the bow-tied professor.

When I first heard about the objections, I envisaged a robust image of, say, a youth coupling with a horse; after all, it was Kinsey's research that revealed 17% of American farmhands had sex with their four-footed charges. But no, it was the naughty words that bothered the Tube censors. They demanded changes to the lettering that runs behind an image of Neeson as Kinsey: whereas once there was the legend "orgasms, masturbation and sleaze", now the punters merely have to grapple with "pleasure" and "sexually". Yuck!