British children’s television character Basil Brush was cleared yesterday of racism, after a gypsy group protested to police about him. Northamptonshire Police launched a probe after Romanies complained about an episode of the Basil Brush Show in which a gypsy woman tried to sell the children’s puppet heather and wooden pegs. The complaint about the show was lodged as an alleged “incident of a racist nature”.
Today the regional police force issued a statement saying that “this complaint has now been concluded to the satisfaction of all parties involved”. Nobody was arrested or charged, it said.
The episode was first shown on the BBC six years ago, and has been repeated eight times since. The programme features Basil's friend Mr Stephen, played by Christopher Pizzey, falling under a gipsy spell which makes him attractive to women. Dame Rosie Fortune, who lives above the pair, tries to sell Basil pegs and heather – but he turns her down. She then offers to tell Basil's fortune, but he says: "I went to a fortune teller once and he said I was going on a long journey." Mr Stephen then asks him what happened, to which Basil replies "He stole my wallet and I had to walk all the way home." BOOM BOOM! The episode, also on a DVD called Basil Unleashed, was last shown on the digital channel CBBC, last month.
Basil Brush was created by Peter Firmin (of Bagpuss and Clangers fame) in 1968 as a vulpine Terry Thomas in 1963 and was given his own show in 1970. Clad in tweed cape and cravat, he sneered at modernity and made fun of everyone who wasn't him. And, like all puppets, he got away with things a human never could. Remove the Emu from Rod Hull's arm then replay that clip of him attacking Michael Parkinson and it immediately becomes a matter for the police. Back in the day, Basil would regularly call his Irish companion, Mr Billy, "shamrock" and "Irish coffee" but these days, as a de-clawed sitcom character, he is guilty of little more than recycling old gags. The Gypsy plotline seems to be an ill-judged one-off. Out of his 1970s context of Alf Garnetts and Bernard Mannings, Basil seems anachronistic, sharing a flat with two children and their boyband-esque uncle. In a society striving for integration, he is one stuffed animal if he thinks he can get away with his old schtick now. In 2002 he made a TV comeback and now stars in a new version of the Seventies children's show Swap Shop, on BBC2.
Bridie Jones, of the England Romany, Gypsy and Irish Traveller Network, accuses the UK media of double standards when it comes to racism. "I find it very upsetting and distressing that in this day-and-age the media will use a puppet to get their own negative views and opinions across of a group that is struggling to survive," Mrs Jones told the BBC. "They are not allowed to joke about blacks or Asians any more because they would be taken to court, but when it comes to Gypsies or the Irish travelling community they mock us - and to them it's not racist. We are the last group of people in this country who you can openly mock and make racist jokes about - who else is there?"
Joseph Jones of the same organization compared the program with the Black and White Minstrel Show, a 1960s show which featured white dancers with black-faced singers. “Racist abuse of black people is quite rightly no longer deemed acceptable, but when a comedian makes a joke on TV about pikeys or gyppos, there’s no comeback,” he told the Mail on Sunday newspaper.
