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Little Britain sketch is ‘explicitly racist and outdated’, Ofcom research finds (www.independent.co.uk)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A controversial Little Britain sketch is “explicitly racist and outdated”, and it is surprising it is still available on BBC iPlayer, according to audience research by Ofcom.

The regulator showed people a number of clips of television as part of a study into audience expectations on potentially offensive content across linear TV and streaming services.

One sketch from Little Britain, originally broadcast in 2002 and available on iPlayer, shows David Walliams as university employee Linda Flint describing an Asian student, Kenneth Lao, over the phone to her manager.

He is described as having “yellowish skin, slight smell of soy sauce … the ching-chong China man.”

The scene is accompanied by a laugh track.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I wasn't a fan at the time - it felt like they did far too much punching down and had failed to properly learn the lessons of The Fast Show (as did a lot of sketch shows that followed in its wake that thought all you really needed was a catchphrase).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wait what was wrong with the Fast Show?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It had the same ten jokes every week.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Well, that was the point. The jokes built on the situations from the previous show. It wasn't literally the same joke, it was an ever increasingly weirder variation. That's what sketch shows are. Same with Goodness Gracious Me.

I thought maybe someone was saying it was racist.

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