Odd this day
On this day 47 years ago, the Sex Pistols were in the news. To put it mildly.
This was, of course, the day after Queen weren’t available for a TV show, so EMI sent their new label-mates instead. The Mirror helpfully provided an asterisked transcript of the dirty bits, but apparently hadn’t had time to work out which member of the band was which:
…but perhaps the most entertaining bit is in the main body of the article, in which one man claims to have subjected his most expensive item of sitting room furniture to The Ultimate Sanction:
They also managed to get hold of a “Mr Holmes, of Beedfield Walk, Waltham Abbey, Essex” who said
I am not a violent person, but I would like to have got hold of Grundy. He should be sacked for encouraging this sort of disgusting behaviour.
According to the book Sex Pistols — Uncensored on the Record, the Telegraph found a Mr Leslie Blunt who said
Our children were waiting for Crossroads when suddenly they heard every swear-word in the book. Surely a button can be pressed to stop this filthy language.
(Strictly speaking, it was only every swear-word in the book if that book was A Short List of Swear Words But Not Piss, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker or Tits, but I digress.)
The show was only broadcast in London, but of course made national news. Grundy was suspended for a fortnight, and his career never fully recovered. The Sex Pistols were
And finally today: happy 22nd anniversary of this unimprovable paragraph appearing in The Observer:
I’ve looked this up, and apparently it happened in 1992, but — as the saying goes — I have not been able to independently verify the story myself. Still, it made me laugh, so there it is in the hope that it will do the same for you.
