The Secret Life of Brian

I see that someone has added the Channel4 documentary about the circumstances around the making of The Life of Brian to YouTube. Perhaps it is in contravention of copyright, but this is an excellent documentary about the ongoing tussle between free speech and causing offence, and I for one, am glad to see it reaching a potentially wider audience.

 

I am pleased to see that the documentary has extracts of a famous (at the time) discussion between John Cleese and Michael Palin (representing the forces of comedy) and the Bishop of Stockwood and Malcolm Muggeridge (representing the forces of Christians against blasphemy).

 

Mervyn Stockwood represents the sort of secretive homosexual that I am grateful never to have been; that final comment in the interview about the Python team having received their thirty pieces of silver is truly beyond contempt. And I well recall the one occasion that I was in the physical presence of Mr. Muggeridge. It was when the Festival of Light (organised by the National Viewers and Listeners Association) was at its peak in the 1970s, and it had a public meeting in Bournemouth starring Mary Whitehouse and St. Mugg. I went along to hear what they had to say. What I heard disgusted me about the organisers and people such as Muggeridge involved in that eruption of hate speech. I felt physically sick at being in a large hall and listening to the baying of people led on by the platform speakers who had no compunction about uttering slander and lies. Even now, at a distance of thirty years, it disgusts me. And these were so-called Christians.