Mark Andrews: Trigger-happy TV, Rayner comes up short, and why it's right to spend more on defence
The snowflake patrols are out in force again, this time targeting a popular sitcom which was first screened in the 1970s.
So which domestic comedy is the latest to be deemed potentially offensive by the BBC's streaming service Britbox? Till Death Us Do Part? Love Thy Neighbour? Surely nobody is offended by the very mild stereotypes of the language college comedy Mind Your Language?
Well no, this time the broadcaster has deemed fit to issue a trigger warning for... Terry & June. Yes, the gentle suburban comedy starring Terry Scott and June Whitfield has been deemed a bit too edgy for the easily offended. Apparently some Terry Medford expressed less than progressive views on Zimbabwean independence, and joked that he once used a vacuum cleaner to freshen up his cat. There must be some seriously thin-skinned people around if either of those things can cause them distress.
The irony is, in targeting those two episodes, they appear to have missed the one that genuinely does make you cringe today: the one when they cast Derek Griffiths, an actor of Ghanaian descent, in the role of an Arab sheikh.
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The irony is that Terry & June is about the very last thing that Generation Trigger Warning would actually watch. Let's be honest, it seemed a little quaint 40 years ago. It is a throwback to the days when comedy didn't need to be hip, clever, and didn't need to have a message – but it did have to be funny. Which is why the Millennials wouldn't understand it.
