In light of the BBC’s most recent antics, it might be worth pointing out that the Beeb has ever and always been–well, a bit wet. Among other offenses, it refused to play Noel Coward’s Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans during World War II. Presumably the problem was that the BBC’s nannies didn’t think their benighted listeners would get the point of Coward’s savagely camp thrust at those who wanted to go easy on the Germans once the war was over:
Let’s be sweet to them
And day by day repeat to them
That sterilization simply isn’t done.
Let’s help the dirty swine again
To occupy the Rhine again,
But don’t let’s be beastly to the Hun.
On the other hand, it probably didn’t help that Coward also took an impish shot at the BBC itself in the next-to-last verse (“Let’s be free with them/And share the BBC with them/We mustn’t prevent them basking in the sun”). Bureaucrats never have a sense of humor when it comes to themselves.