|
?:reviewBody
|
-
The British Captain Pugwash animated television series, which originally aired on the BBC between 1958 and 1967, is widely believed to have featured characters with risqué maritime names such as Master Bates, Seaman Staines, and Roger the Cabin Boy. In fact, the crew of the famous Black Pig ship included sailors with no such names. Present on board were Master Mate, Tom the Cabin Boy, and Pirates Barnabas and Willy. (No character with the designation of 'Seaman' appeared in the show.) Series creator John Ryan successfully won retractions and settlements from Sunday Correspondent and the Guardian after both newspapers claimed that the show's characters did indeed have smutty names, and that the BBC had taken it off the air as a result. The Guardian's statement ran as follows: Evening Standard correspondent Victor Lewis-Smith wrote several years later: Puns that play on the homophony of masturbates-Master Bates and seamen-semen are quite old (recall the What's long and hard and filled with seamen? joke), and it was probably only a matter of time before someone made the obvious jokes about the names of sailors in a long-running television series, especially since people seem to find this type of humor particularly titillating when it is ascribed to the creators of children's programming. However, as this audio clip demonstrates, the exact pronunciation of certain Captain Pugwash character names could (perhaps deliberately) be difficult to discern. The British comedy duo of Victor Lewis-Smith and Paul Sparks has claimed credit for starting and spreading the Captain Pugwash rumors, and the double entendre names have also been attributed to a sketch by seventies folkie comic Richard Digance as well as a 1970s rag mag. Additional information: More about Captain Pugwash.
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}