BBC Memory-Holes Comedy Sketches That Satirized Racism
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,
The BBC has completely cut multiple sketches from 2006 comedy skit show That Mitchell and Webb Look after dumping the Bafta-winning series back onto its streaming service for its twentieth anniversary.
The official line is that some of the old material no longer "works today." What no longer works, it turns out, is comedy that satirised and mocked the very mindset of racism.
A BBC spokesman said: "This is a 20-year-old sketch show; in consultation with the programme makers, we have included the ones that still work today and not the ones that don't." David Mitchell and Robert Webb have not publicly replied at time of writing.
The sketches were not random gags that aged badly. They were built as self-aware send-ups of the people doing the offending. Yet in 2026, not even this is acceptable.
Eleven sketches have been stripped out, including a skit named 'How Not What To Look Like / Behind the Scenes: Burqa', a makeover-show parody in which Mitchell plays a contestant in a burqa.
The scene then cuts to Mitchell and Webb as themselves. Webb asks whether they are "just taking the piss out of people's sincerely held beliefs." Mitchell replies: "I think you can worry too much about this kind of thing. I mean, what's offensive to one person is just good, clean fun to another." He then pulls off the burqa and is in blackface.
The entire foundation of the joke is predicated on the fact that putting blackface on a TV show is NOT acceptable. But any clever or nuanced factors just don't matter anymore, because LOOK BLACKFACE IS BAD.
It's the exact point the joke is making. Yet it still got cut because thinking and considering why something is funny isn't permitted in 2026.
Another sketch that was erased from history was called 'Racist War Re-enactment'. Mitchell and Webb play bored English Civil War re-enactors who have had enough of Roundheads and Cavaliers.
They then black up to stage a clash between government forces and rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Webb asks: "Are you absolutely sure that this isn't racist?" Mitchell insists it is "a historically accurate recreation of a landmark global conflict."
After a machete comes out and the accent arrives, they stop and admit it is "very, very racist."
In another cut sketch, Webb encounters an apparently indigenous "tribe" living among the ornamental grasses of a garden centre. It parodies the earnest documentary encounter with "uncontacted" peoples, complete with jokes about the expanding home-and-gift aisle.
In another sketch titled 'The War On Bill Oddie', the United Nations, having decided the war on terror is too difficult, launches a war on the birdwatching BBC presenter instead. This was apparently cut because Bill Oddie has since died.
In another sketch, Webb impersonates a TV chef, who has also since died, and delivers 'homophobic' lines as part of the character.
Another sketch titled Rude Gandhi was binned. You can guess why.
Another three skits titled 'Gilbert & Sullivan, parts 1 to 3' were also erased
Reporting also lists a Jimmy Savile gag among the material taken out. The BBC never removed Savile, the monstrous pedophile, from it's decades of programming, even when it was known he was at the very least fucking creepy, yet a joke about Savile from 2006 must be purged.
The famous "Are we the baddies?" Nazi foxhole sketch, featuring the line "Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them?" was left untouched.
That is the irony the corporation cannot see. A sketch about two Waffen-SS officers slowly realising they might be the villains remains available. Sketches in which two white comedians realise they are being racist, and stop, have to be memoryholed.
The joke was never the blackface. The joke was the idiocy and short sightedness of the people doing it.
Comedian Geoff Norcott called teh BBC's actions "sinister":
"There's something sinister about this ongoing retrospective moral pruning," he wrote. "Especially when the sketches were literally satirising the thought processes behind racism."
That is the crux. The comedy was not racist. It was satirising the mindset of racism. No matter. The clip has to vanish from the archive. Context is not allowed. Intent is not allowed. The image is now a crime.
Journalist Charlie Walsham noted, "I despair. The BBC has inserted harmful trans ideology into a range of programmes, from dramas to lifestyle shows to children's programmes. It continues to promote gender ideology despite criticism that this does not reflect reality or impartiality. And yet now the BBC is getting rid of Mitchell and Webb sketches in an Orwellian scrubbing of relatively recent comedy because they apparently 'no longer work today'. Who they no longer work for isn't clear. Humourless lanyard wearers, presumably."
British comedian Dom Joly, who has also been the target of such retrospective cancelation, told The Times: "I totally get it if the BBC is putting out something really racist, which is laughing at and encouraging other people to feel that it's OK to do that. But it's so clear that Mitchell and Webb are not doing that."
"Their intent was not to be racist," Joly urged, calling the move "classic BBC overkill" and "hysterical censorship."
Jimmy Mulville, co-founder of production company Hat Trick, said producers had to be careful "that this is not the thin end of a wedge where we cut things out," and added: "Personally ... I wouldn't censor anything."
Another core point to all of this is that Mitchell and Webb are not some sort of right wing or anti-establishment wreckers. They are the definition of safe, left-liberal BBC talent. They're all over Milquetoast Panel shows and 'highbrow' Radio 4 programming. They still appear across the corporation. They are not Tommy Robinson with a sketch show.
If even they have to have their work sanitised because a clip of blackface exists for two seconds as the punchline of an anti-racist joke, then the standard is not "harm." The standard is discomfort.
Oscar winning actress Olivia Colman also appears throughout the cut material. The same Olivia Coleman who has been dubbed "the most insufferable Left-wing celebrity in Britain."
Ideology that flatters the current staff is "representation." Comedy that makes the same staff wince is "no longer working today." We have covered that institutional capture before.
Little Britain was pulled in 2020 for blackface, then returned with cuts and a warning. Mitchell and Webb now get the same treatment, except the sketches being deleted are the ones that already contained the warning inside the joke. The characters stop. They call themselves racist. They walk away. That is not enough. The whole thing must now be deleted.
Licence-fee payers funded the original broadcasts. They are now being told those broadcasts exist in a lesser, safer form because a modern day committee of wet sponges decided the satire might be misunderstood by someone who will not listen to or understand the punchline.
The show that gave the culture the line "are we the baddies?" has been quietly edited so todays baddies, the new puritans, never have to ask the question of themselves.
The BBC, which once pushed boundaries with comedy programming like The Office and The Day Today has now become a platform for the most humourless, woke, leftist claptrap imaginable.
But it's worse than that.
Parents have accused the BBC of harming children through a drip-feed of pro-trans content in kids' programming, from Hey Duggee pronouns to medical-transition storylines treated as settled fact.
Former news director Fran Unsworth said the "progressive madness" and bullying around trans coverage drove her out.
The same machine has handed activist campaigners a seat at the table on children's output and used flagship soaps to launder pro-migrant storylines.
It has recast 1066 with a racially 'diverse' lineup, pushed a furry storyline into a soap, produced a microaggressions film so alien to ordinary life that it went viral as a joke, and been accused of using soaps as a covert vaccine-compliance tool.
It will not hire people who refuse the diversity catechism. A senior employee once branded white people a "parasitical, deviant breed." A report on Islamic child slavery in Afghanistan was framed as grimly "necessary." News output has been deceptively edited and shaped in ways the corporation now faces lawsuits over.
Tyler Durden Wed, 09/23/2026 - 05:00
Continue reading...
[ H/T ZeroHedge ]
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,
The BBC has completely cut multiple sketches from 2006 comedy skit show That Mitchell and Webb Look after dumping the Bafta-winning series back onto its streaming service for its twentieth anniversary.
The official line is that some of the old material no longer "works today." What no longer works, it turns out, is comedy that satirised and mocked the very mindset of racism.
A BBC spokesman said: "This is a 20-year-old sketch show; in consultation with the programme makers, we have included the ones that still work today and not the ones that don't." David Mitchell and Robert Webb have not publicly replied at time of writing.
The sketches were not random gags that aged badly. They were built as self-aware send-ups of the people doing the offending. Yet in 2026, not even this is acceptable.
Eleven sketches have been stripped out, including a skit named 'How Not What To Look Like / Behind the Scenes: Burqa', a makeover-show parody in which Mitchell plays a contestant in a burqa.
The scene then cuts to Mitchell and Webb as themselves. Webb asks whether they are "just taking the piss out of people's sincerely held beliefs." Mitchell replies: "I think you can worry too much about this kind of thing. I mean, what's offensive to one person is just good, clean fun to another." He then pulls off the burqa and is in blackface.
The entire foundation of the joke is predicated on the fact that putting blackface on a TV show is NOT acceptable. But any clever or nuanced factors just don't matter anymore, because LOOK BLACKFACE IS BAD.
It's the exact point the joke is making. Yet it still got cut because thinking and considering why something is funny isn't permitted in 2026.
Another sketch that was erased from history was called 'Racist War Re-enactment'. Mitchell and Webb play bored English Civil War re-enactors who have had enough of Roundheads and Cavaliers.
They then black up to stage a clash between government forces and rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Webb asks: "Are you absolutely sure that this isn't racist?" Mitchell insists it is "a historically accurate recreation of a landmark global conflict."
After a machete comes out and the accent arrives, they stop and admit it is "very, very racist."
In another cut sketch, Webb encounters an apparently indigenous "tribe" living among the ornamental grasses of a garden centre. It parodies the earnest documentary encounter with "uncontacted" peoples, complete with jokes about the expanding home-and-gift aisle.
In another sketch titled 'The War On Bill Oddie', the United Nations, having decided the war on terror is too difficult, launches a war on the birdwatching BBC presenter instead. This was apparently cut because Bill Oddie has since died.
In another sketch, Webb impersonates a TV chef, who has also since died, and delivers 'homophobic' lines as part of the character.
Another sketch titled Rude Gandhi was binned. You can guess why.
Another three skits titled 'Gilbert & Sullivan, parts 1 to 3' were also erased
Reporting also lists a Jimmy Savile gag among the material taken out. The BBC never removed Savile, the monstrous pedophile, from it's decades of programming, even when it was known he was at the very least fucking creepy, yet a joke about Savile from 2006 must be purged.
The famous "Are we the baddies?" Nazi foxhole sketch, featuring the line "Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them?" was left untouched.
That is the irony the corporation cannot see. A sketch about two Waffen-SS officers slowly realising they might be the villains remains available. Sketches in which two white comedians realise they are being racist, and stop, have to be memoryholed.
The joke was never the blackface. The joke was the idiocy and short sightedness of the people doing it.
Comedian Geoff Norcott called teh BBC's actions "sinister":
"There's something sinister about this ongoing retrospective moral pruning," he wrote. "Especially when the sketches were literally satirising the thought processes behind racism."
That is the crux. The comedy was not racist. It was satirising the mindset of racism. No matter. The clip has to vanish from the archive. Context is not allowed. Intent is not allowed. The image is now a crime.
Journalist Charlie Walsham noted, "I despair. The BBC has inserted harmful trans ideology into a range of programmes, from dramas to lifestyle shows to children's programmes. It continues to promote gender ideology despite criticism that this does not reflect reality or impartiality. And yet now the BBC is getting rid of Mitchell and Webb sketches in an Orwellian scrubbing of relatively recent comedy because they apparently 'no longer work today'. Who they no longer work for isn't clear. Humourless lanyard wearers, presumably."
British comedian Dom Joly, who has also been the target of such retrospective cancelation, told The Times: "I totally get it if the BBC is putting out something really racist, which is laughing at and encouraging other people to feel that it's OK to do that. But it's so clear that Mitchell and Webb are not doing that."
"Their intent was not to be racist," Joly urged, calling the move "classic BBC overkill" and "hysterical censorship."
Jimmy Mulville, co-founder of production company Hat Trick, said producers had to be careful "that this is not the thin end of a wedge where we cut things out," and added: "Personally ... I wouldn't censor anything."
Another core point to all of this is that Mitchell and Webb are not some sort of right wing or anti-establishment wreckers. They are the definition of safe, left-liberal BBC talent. They're all over Milquetoast Panel shows and 'highbrow' Radio 4 programming. They still appear across the corporation. They are not Tommy Robinson with a sketch show.
If even they have to have their work sanitised because a clip of blackface exists for two seconds as the punchline of an anti-racist joke, then the standard is not "harm." The standard is discomfort.
Oscar winning actress Olivia Colman also appears throughout the cut material. The same Olivia Coleman who has been dubbed "the most insufferable Left-wing celebrity in Britain."
Ideology that flatters the current staff is "representation." Comedy that makes the same staff wince is "no longer working today." We have covered that institutional capture before.
Little Britain was pulled in 2020 for blackface, then returned with cuts and a warning. Mitchell and Webb now get the same treatment, except the sketches being deleted are the ones that already contained the warning inside the joke. The characters stop. They call themselves racist. They walk away. That is not enough. The whole thing must now be deleted.
Licence-fee payers funded the original broadcasts. They are now being told those broadcasts exist in a lesser, safer form because a modern day committee of wet sponges decided the satire might be misunderstood by someone who will not listen to or understand the punchline.
The show that gave the culture the line "are we the baddies?" has been quietly edited so todays baddies, the new puritans, never have to ask the question of themselves.
The BBC, which once pushed boundaries with comedy programming like The Office and The Day Today has now become a platform for the most humourless, woke, leftist claptrap imaginable.
But it's worse than that.
Parents have accused the BBC of harming children through a drip-feed of pro-trans content in kids' programming, from Hey Duggee pronouns to medical-transition storylines treated as settled fact.
Former news director Fran Unsworth said the "progressive madness" and bullying around trans coverage drove her out.
The same machine has handed activist campaigners a seat at the table on children's output and used flagship soaps to launder pro-migrant storylines.
It has recast 1066 with a racially 'diverse' lineup, pushed a furry storyline into a soap, produced a microaggressions film so alien to ordinary life that it went viral as a joke, and been accused of using soaps as a covert vaccine-compliance tool.
It will not hire people who refuse the diversity catechism. A senior employee once branded white people a "parasitical, deviant breed." A report on Islamic child slavery in Afghanistan was framed as grimly "necessary." News output has been deceptively edited and shaped in ways the corporation now faces lawsuits over.
Tyler Durden Wed, 09/23/2026 - 05:00
Continue reading...
[ H/T ZeroHedge ]
