Saturday Night Takeaway 2021

We went from Week One, having the warm, talented and now very well appreciated as an actor, the musician Olly Alexander to Week Two, Gordon Ramsay, what a drop.

Gordon should have had some common sense when he knew he was appearing live on SNT. How did he not know how to behave? Beggars belief that he swore, and that he was rude and insulting to an audience member.

Just because you are known for swearing a lot, does not give you a pass on a Saturday night prime time show. I mean, Jimmy Carr swears, and is as rude and crude as you can ever get on his stand up shows and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, but when he appears on a family show, he knows where the line is.

I think it makes sense for them to censor the swearing for Hub on a family show, but a simple bleep would probably have sufficed rather than cutting a bit out of the show.

I’m trying to think back, didn’t they just use a bleep when Amanda Holden screamed the f word live on BGT when that ‘haunted’ magician scared her a couple of years ago?

Some of this sounds like the Daily Express. As mentioned, Ant referred to him as their worst ever guest in the context of Read My Lips alone, where he was indeed useless.

As for the other bit, I find that a bit of an over-reaction. Gordon Ramsay wasn't particularly good and they probably won't rush to have him back, but I can forgive him letting out a mild swear word during a rather frantic game. I know he's been on television for many years, but not that much has been live and not much of it has been before the watershed, and seemingly he does have issues when he's out of his comfort zone, his episode of HIGNFY was a bit notorious for the number of retakes he had to do. And some people really struggle on live TV, think back to the famous Wogan interview with Anne Bancroft, she was a much acclaimed and very popular actress but she absolutely hated live TV and was so nervous she didn't say a word.

And sometimes for people swearing is incredibly natural, the obvious one is Shaun Ryder on TFI where he was briefed not to swear, the whole interview was based around him not swearing, he promised he wouldn't swear and he promptly swore within ten seconds. He just couldn't help it. Seemingly Ramsay is another one. You can argue it is the fault of the programme for booking him in the first place, given that, as mentioned, they'd just done a routine about him swearing.



Do they?! That's news to me.

Yep, it may be down to if there is a difference between how iplayer and the ITV Hub release things - for the live shows iplayer can have the ident at the start and sometimes the start of a trailer at the end with live shows, ITV doesn't do any of that.

Now the version on iplayer may later get replaced a few days later, but I've certainly gone back and watched sports events where either the crowd or the players have swore (when it's been mentioned on here), and it's been left in.

I'm sure there was a Eurovision a few years back where someone accidently swore (it might have been the stage invasion or at some point in the green room) and that was left in.

This is why I still prefer to record things rather than rely on catch up. I agree that a bleep is all that is necessary (and surely easier to edit in than cutting a chunk out). The large family audience works against it in this case but generally speaking OFCOM wouldn't have too much of an issue with such a minor swear word.

I suspect they'll be a conversation to be had in the near future about the watershed on linear TV in a world where not only can you watch post-watershed content at any time of day but the likes of Sky Atlantic are now showing the likes of The Sopronos mid-afternoon - and I doubt there is a kid in the country who couldn't get around any pin-protection in place.

Last week, Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly on Channel 5 included the s-word twice, before 9pm. Nowhere seems to have picked up on it, apart from a few on Twitter.

I think that word is allowed before the watershed depending on context. I've certainly heard uses of it during the day.

It depends on the circumstance and the intended audience.

The mistake Matt Tebutt made at the very start of Saturday Kitchen (along with very mild swear) earlier this year was cut from the BBC iplayer.

Indeed, I've heard it used during Married at First Sight Australia and that's at 7:30pm

Not a Gordon fan then in other words?

Yes. There's absolutely no way anything like the swearing on Saturday Night Takeaway would have gone straight on iPlayer "as-is".

I'm surprised how often swear words go unnoticed on Gold in the middle of the afternoon. In fact I'm pretty sure I saw Gavin and Stacey go out on Dave at around 2pm one day and Larry Lamb's line "s**t a brick" was completely intact.