Jimmy Carr has recently apologised for any offence he may have caused after a joke of his about UK servicemen hit the headlines. As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, we receive a small number of complaints during and after each series of Benidorm. Although I don’t like to think I offend anyone with the tv shows I write I think it’s kind of unavoidable. The kind of things that make me laugh most are usually things that society tells me I shouldn’t be laughing at. In series 1 there was a conversation between 2 characters about one confusing M.S. for M.E. (or was it the other way around?…); anyway, we had a fair number of complaints about that scene, mainly because of the line from the character Janice saying “M.E., M.S., it’s all lazy buggers cracking on there’s something wrong with them int it?”. For me, the humour in that comes from the character trying to make ‘friendly’ small talk and failing miserably by being hugely offensive. Interestingly I also got an email from an old friend of mine Wayne Dobson ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Dobson ) who said he wept with laughter at that scene and yes, you guessed it, Wayne suffers from M.S. Of course you can’t please all of the people all of the time; I’ve recently got two emails from fans of the show asking why I have ‘toned down’ the characters Donald and Jacqueline. Well, I haven’t. Not knowingly anyway. I think the difference is in the first series viewers didn’t know the characters and it was a bit of a shock to hear two, not conventionally attractive, middle aged characters talking very openly about sex. In episode 2 they corner Martin and reveal Jacqueline has always had a crush on him and how Donald could be “very passive with the right, sensitive kind of man”, I don’t think that is ‘toning them down’; I think it’s one of the most terrifying, sinister parts of series 3!
We were told at the beginning of shooting for series 3 that under no circumstances were we allowed the word ‘fuck’ or phrase ‘fucking hell’. This obviously came hot on the heels of the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross controversy and upset me greatly. As Billy Connolly quite rightly says, “people complain about me swearing, what they fail to mention is I do it very well”. I’m not that good at blowing my own trumpet, let’s face it, if I was I’d never leave the house (© Bob Monkhouse circa 1976) but I do think the swearing in Benidorm is used sparingly and well. I self censor a lot when writing 2nd and 3rd drafts and some swearing falls by the wayside but every now and again substitutes just don’t ring true (or funny). If you’ve been watching this series of Benidorm then you’ll realise ITV did relax a little (as the Ross/Brand furor began to die down) they let me use the language I felt was right for the show and everyone was happy. Except for the few moaning tossers that are still complaining of course…
