“BBC removes 11 Mitchell and Webb comedy sketches from iPlayer,” reports the BBC.
You want to see the sketches more, now, don’t you? Thank you, “Basil the Great”.
đšNEWS: The BBC have removed a number of sketches by Mitchell & Webb as they are now deemed offensive
This sketch which features a Burqa and Blackface purposefully to make fun of how offended people get has now been ironically axed, because people may be offended. pic.twitter.com/jEy3QJ5Cvv
— Basil the Great (@BasilTheGreat) September 21, 2026
Edit: And here’s the Civil War re-enactors sketch, courtesy of Giop Saus on YouTube.
Season 2 of “That Mitchell and Webb look” was made in 2007. At that time, TM&WL’s style of comedy was seen as mildly left wing and definitely anti-racist. They certainly saw themselves that way. Almost twenty years later, the Civil War sketch is genuinely thought-provoking comedy. Within the context of the sketch, I instinctively get why Mitchell’s character stops the re-enactment after Webb’s character says, “I am going to kill you with this big machete” in an African accent. I think the fake accent coupled with a portrayal of motiveless savagery tips it over to being racist (remembering that the whole thing is a act within an act, and the man waving the machete is portrayed as being frightfully worried that his portrayal of a “real” Sudanese machete-waver might be racist). But if asked to point out exactly why the whole idea of white British people re-enacting the Second Congo War is racist, my hand does several mid-air circuits without ever quite coming in to land. Why is it perfectly OK for a man to put on a great big wig and wave a sword about in order to play a Royalist officer in the English Civil War but not OK to put on a great big wig and wave a machete about in order to play a militia leader in the Second Congo War? Is it because the re-enactor played by Webb is white and presumably is descended from ancestors who might well have fought in the English Civil War but no one (so far as I know) looking like him fought in the Second Congo War? If so, would it be equally unacceptable to have a black British re-enactor play the Cavalier – as seems to be the fashion these days?
Related post: The fact that a British personâs ancestors were not British is not shameful and need not be concealed
Anyone got the links to these?
Is this where the BBC ask themselves “Are we the baddies”?
Linked in the article above, the final link
WindyPants,
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Why not just get ahead of everything, and cancel any new show as soon as it is approved, since someone in the future will be offended by it?
Our licence fee money at work.
That would require far more self-awareness than the BBC has across all divisions.
Good post by Natalie and good comments.
Yes the BBC Tax “License Fee” is unacceptable – and the endless efforts to “reform” the BBC, rather than end-the-tax, are absurd, BBC leftist bias became obvious as far back as 1963 (with shows such as “That Was The Week That Was”) and has been getting worse-and-worse for over 60 years – anyone who still supports “the License Fee” is contemptible.
However, it is not just the BBC – it is the general establishment and the education system that produces it, for example Sky News (hopefully soon go go) and Channel Four are just as leftist as the BBC – and “Ofcom” (an unelected group of officials and “experts”) is a disgrace – for example their persecution of Mark Steyn for the “crime” of telling the truth, rather than endlessly lying – endlessly lying being what “Ofcom” wants broadcasters to do.
It was ‘The Goons’ who first called the BBC the Big Brother Corporation. Can you still listen to that radio skit?
Who said there’ll always be an England?
They are now talking about putting ÂŁ11 a month on internet bills.
They are doing this because we didn’t hang them the first time around.
Racism is in short supply, so they are having to create more of it to meet the demand.
@Dan Souter. The BBC is talking about that. The green paper explicitly rules out any form of household levy. Even the government has more sense than the BBC.
I think the real problem is the parting shot saying I don’t care what people think any more. Basically they can be as offended as they like, I no longer give a shit. We can’t have that attitude catching on can we? It might trigger an epidemic of anxiety attacks.
Ben David – have you not heard, England (not just Britain – England) is a “social construct”, if someone supports the the BBC and the NHS that makes them “English”.
Jeremy Hunt, former “Conservative” Chancellor – and still a Member of Parliament, said that what made him “proud to be British” was the NHS – a copy of the Soviet health care system created more than 20 years before 1948, and giving the United Kingdom one of the worst records on health in the Western world.