Is this the most offensive show ever broadcast by the BBC in the name of "entertainment"?

[Nye Bevan]

From July 21, 1978. Simply mind-boggling.

[VanillaRhapsody]

1. picking chin up off floor!

[LuvNewcastle]

2. Reminds me of the Lawrence Welk Show,

although I don't remember them ever doing a blackface skit. It would have been controversial in America for men in blackface to be dancing around with white women, even though everyone knew the men were really white.

[SidDithers]

3. Holy crap, that's bad...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_and_White_Minstrel_Show

Amazing how popular it was.

Sid

[geomon666]

4. That went on for 20 years?

Wow.

[enlightenment]

5. And I thought golliwogs

and Black Peters were bad.

What were they thinking??

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Maybe, but the Brits didn't have the racial problems we had and...

the outrage over their minstrel shows was far less than ours was, if there was much outrage at all. Here, blackface minstrels were targeted and demonized. I don't say they shouldn't have been, but US racial specifics are not necessarily international ones.

Nonetheless, they killed off their minstrel shows over 30 years ago, so why dredge up this embarrassing mess?

[JaneyVee]

7. Insane. But what's the deal with the white around the eyes?

[MrSlayer]

9. Yes, I so hate musicals and variety shows.

That was just awful.