Walters to play Mary Whitehouse in new BBC TV drama

Mary Whitehouse, the campaigner who embarked on a one-woman mission to clean up British television, will be played by Julie Walters in a new BBC drama, it was revealed yesterday. Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story will bring to life the battle for morals that raged in the 1960s, the BBC said. Hugh Bonneville will star as Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, the former Director-General of the BBC, whom Whitehouse held mainly responsible for the moral collapse of the country.

The animosity between the two culminated in a bitter fight to broadcast the word “knickers” in the Beatles song 'I Am the Walrus'. Whitehouse was an unknown housewife and teacher from the Midlands when she began campaigning in 1963.

Backed by her loyal husband Ernest (Alun Armstrong), Whitehouse set out to fight a war to stop “filth” entering family homes via the television.

Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story will be broadcast on BBC Two on May 28 at 9pm