Programme - it was alright in the 70's FUCKING HELL!

[PatButchersLostEaring]

Anyone else watching this and feeling utterly shocked that it was only 40ish years ago?

the gap between rich and poor was much much smaller in the 70's, Britain was at it's most equitable since about the 1920's.

In terms of inequality we have seriously gone backwards since the 70's.

My memories of the 1970's all have a sort of golden haze around them

I'm a baby boomer and I never liked Benny Hill or Charlie Drake. It's possible that 10 years-worth of programme archives were trawled with a nit comb, looking for this sort of obnoxious way of looking at women.

A lot of it was taken as a natural way of behaving. We have fewer wolf whistles in the street now, don't we, but there was a time when, if a woman were the subject of a wolf whistle, she felt good about it and take it as a compliment. I never did though. Perhaps I was boring.

Putting all the clips into one programme was a very good idea to show us all and dirty old men in mucky macs how we lived

I really don't think ANY of the actresses in the 70's plying Benny Hill girls/schoolgirls etc were forced to act and take their clothes off were they?

exploitation? they chose to be be flirty and show their cleavage and stuff.

if they really diodnt want to do it they could have all walked out of the programmes.

and no, I wasn't shocked (except the rape references), and tv hasn't changed much as other posters are saying about the Kims/mileys etc.

same with the beauty pageants, they've chosen to display themselves, same as men with their muscle whatever you call the pageant where they show off their toned muscly bodies (in fact it featured on Gibraltar, Britain in the sun last week).

no one forced them.

I think, tardis that it was the attitudes towards women at the time that forced the women to behave the way they did. I think for a lot of us, it was subliminal and completely over our heads, which is why we found yesterday's programe so shocking.

limitedperiod what you say was true for me too. My parents were born in the 1920s and so older in the 1960s than the vast majority of my school friends' parents. I was never smacked. My dad once told me other men said he was gay (it would have been different terminology then)... for walking me in my pram. But he did! He also went into Boots and asked for Farex - and, not believing a man would be buying baby food they gave him Durex...

My mum would do the painting and decorating in the house. And my dad often cooked. They both washed up and dad also baked. Many of my friends were hit by their parents - but by no means everyone.
I can remember I had friends at school whose parents wouldn't watch Monty Python or Spike Milligan - I watched those things alongside my dad. But we'd also watch 'Carry On's.

I suppose these kind of TV shows want an angle and a narrative and the complexity of the real world is never going to be acknowledged in this kind of thing.

Joffrey I liked to eat Farex even as an adult. So smooooth ......

Never liked rusks though because they almost had no taste.

Joffrey - they probably said he was a puff. I had friends whose parents had a belt hanging up in the kitchen. I didn't particularly think it was odd, but I knew it was different to how things were in my home.

JoffreyBaratheon Fantastic.

My dad pushed me in my pram in the mid-Sixties too. I obviously don't remember that. But he did embroider and I have a tattered cloth for mopping up baby-puke with a flower and my initials on it.

We watched Fawlty Towers together on a Monday night when my mum was out at bingo.

Also Joffrey my dad used to take me to riding lessons because my mum couldn't bear to watch my death-defying antics on horseback but trusted him to watch me.

Except he didn't. I'd have my lesson and he'd have a couple of pints in the pub down the road and be back in time to collect me. That secret went with him to his grave. And I kept it until she was in hers too

limited my dad had a evening job playing round the Northern club circuit and he'd often rescue mum from childcare, taking us kids with him. We'd be propping up the bar whilst he played, drinking lager and lime because everyone in the 60s knew lager was a kiddy drink. 60s' dads did the best childcare!

OK thanks limited - and thanks for your kind words! :)

My dad baked (and bakes) a lot too. He also changed diaper/pushed prams. He is a "natural feminist" ( never treated me any different from my brothers), quite rare in a way I guess.

He was so disappointed I did not become an engineer though, he was always puzzled by the lack of female engineers and as he thinks the workings of machines to be the most interesting thing in life, he thought women were missing out...

He thought it was just lack of encouragement.

Why DO so few women choose science and engineering?

Some of the examples, though, were just plain funny: the Windy Miller and cider stuff.

As regards the Butterflies and rape comment, I don't see anything offensive about that specially: the character clearly realised that she used the wrong word when she meant being sexually taken by a man which would not be rape as she wanted him to take her.

Also the Lovers sketch, I don't think he wanted to rape her: just take her passionately with her consent. Perhaps rape was used sort of casually back then when people meant taking a partner but who wanted them back? And not the way we see it today as non-consenting sex?

The bit that was most shocking was the Alison Steadman tv show with her granddad letching over her; but then was this meant to be a sitcom comedy or serious drama? If the latter, then perhaps the audience is meant to be horrified? If the former, then it's obviously repulsive.

All I'm saying is that some of the examples shouldn't be seen as necessarily bad; IYSWIM.

Chandon - when I was younger I wanted to be an engineer and take over my grandad's business. But he discouraged me from it, as he had also done with my Mum - she was allowed to help out with filing, typing and so on but not to get into the workshop. He was pretty chauvinistic but I didn't realise that at the time - he just kept saying " you don't want to have to deal with all this swarf all the time" (true enough, actually). I still went into science, but chemistry based.

I grew up in the 1970s born in 1958.
I was a teenager when it was common to be groped at work or socially by men. At the time I just shrugged it off. It didn't occur to me at the time that the practise was reinforced and made acceptable by the media.
It was an interesting snapshot of what tv was like. Most of it was unquestioned at the time by the older generation but I remember arguing with my grandad about the sexism of beauty contests and racism in sit coms.

Thumb witch, my grandad had a machine factory , the techy gen skipped me...

Wow! Just watched on catch up stony faced. That was grim.

I was born in 1966 and hated Benny Hill at the time. Horrible sexism.

A lot of the programmes would have been past my bedtime or my parents didn't watch them.

Windy Miller being pissed went over my head at the time. And it felt normal for adults to smoke so again didn't notice Thunderbirds smoking. That poor elephant, so cruel

It was seriously grim but other posters are right - its not that we can sit back and congratulate ourselves on everything being so much better now.

The most jawdropping scene for me was the clip from the Black and White Minstrel Show at the very end - a man in blackface and a kilt trying to shove his hands up the skirt of a woman who was singing a song to him that went along the lines of 'keep your hands to yourself now Jock'. I do not understand for a single second how the B&W Minstrels were so popular. My MIL could talk all day about them and how wonderful they were and how much she enjoyed going to see them live and how she would go to see them again like a shot if they reformed She also describes their act as 'good clean fun'. Honestly.

Anyone remember 'On The Buses'? Stunningly ugly men being incomprehensibly successful with much younger women?

It was to watch. I didnt know they smoked on the programmes. Not excusing any crime, but yes it was the culture back then to flirt and fratonise with older teenage girls. No of course this would be unacceptable.

Joffrey we did complain. We did hate it. But no-one listened

Absolutely 100% agree with that remark.

I've always been glad that I went into librarianship, as it meant that my working life has been spent in the public sphere - which has always (even in the 60s) been more 'PC' and less tolerant of any mysogeny, homophobia etc.

My friend was a secretary throughout the 60s and 70s, and would shock me with tales of the bra-twanging, bottom-pinching, sexual innuendo that she had to contend with... This did alter as she got older (!) but when she was 43, her (younger) boss did inform a client that 'the girl' would get them coffee..!!!! (She made the coffee, waited until the client had gone, went into her boss's office and 'words were had' He knew her name after that...)
I do agree that things haven't changed now - just gone undercover. Certain words aren't (commonly) used any more - but the attitude of young men towards women horrifies me just as much now as it did then.

I watched it - I'm 50 so I remember all of those programmes well. Absolutely unbelievable now but just run of mill then.

I remember a few years back flicking through some old books in a charity shop. One such book was published in the 1970s and it was a joke book. One such 'joke' was a cartoon that showed a half-dressed child (not a young women of about 16 or 17 but clearly a pre-pubescent child) having just had an encounter with an old man. Can't even remember the 'punchline' of the cartoon. I was deeply shocked. I don't blame the charity shop as such; not their fault.

And this was a mainstream joke book.

Absolutely jaw-dropping.

That said, though, some examples from this particular show seemed a bit contrived and showing only snippets is sometimes misleading: the Windy Miller scene in its entirety is a lesson for children in the perils of drinking too much as the baker didn't get his flour as Windy was too drunk to operate the mill.

But having seen that 'joke book' with my own eyes, I can say that the 70s were in many ways very grim.