Filth detector

I wish Mary Whitehouse were still among us. In my teenage years, she was an invaluable guide to where the filth could be found on television — though to be frank most of what she disliked was disappointing: hardly titillating, and far from filthy. I suspect that if she were invited back to earth to see a special showing of Belle de Jour, Californication, and now Fanny Hill, she would realise with horror that her life had been in vain, and she would do whatever people who are already dead do instead of committing suicide.

Andrew Davies is the adaptor who is famous for putting in the sex that the original writers left out, on the grounds that they would have included it if the mores of the time had allowed. Hence all those wet cambric shirts and heaving bosoms in Pride and Prejudice. I’d love to see his version of, say, Principia Mathematica.