Tuesday, December 18, 2007
BBC Radio 1 bosses have today reversed their decision to censor the word “faggot” from the 20 year old Fairytale of New York song by The Pogues. The initial censoring of the song caused controversy recently as the song had been played for 20 years without censoring, and resulted in many people contacting the BBC saying the decision was “ridiculous”. The ban was also ridiculed for the fact that it only applied to Radio 1 and not to Radio 2 or any other station on the BBC network.
The Radio 1 management made the initial decision saying “We are playing an edited version because some members of the audience might find it offensive” and thus the word faggot was disguised from “you scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot”. The word “slut” from the line “you’re an old slut on junk” was also censored.
A further meeting was held today in which the management decided to stick by their initial decision, however at around 18.00 (UTC) a breaking news bulletin, from Andy Parfitt the controller of Radio 1, was read out during the Scott Mills show, saying that the decision was “wrong” and that the full song would be played un-edited in future.