The Sheltered Lifers

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 400, 21 February 1947, Page 10

The Sheltered Lifers

S you have probably heard from Flanagan and Allen, it is an unpleesant feeling being on the outside looking in, yet it often happens to ITMA addcts. There’s a crack from somebody, appreciative applause, a faint click perhaps, then great gales of leughter that set your radio rocking on its shelf. And you know that sex and censorship have simultaneously reared their ugly heads. Now there are two theories of censorship, the first, and harsher, that the censor is a Barrett of Wimpole Street, and the second, and more favoured (especially by the censor h mself) that he is a dual piece of apparatus, combining ultra sensitive barometer to gauge the susceptibilities of the community and filter arrangement for the removal of impurities. In either case it would seem that New Zealand listeners to Tommy Handley are more allerg c to lewdness than their English equivalents, since extra censorship is provided; and it may be th’s extrdsensitivity of ours (and the consequent fact that we have few contacts with pitch) which give our faces that look which some oversees v sitors describe as smug and others as c'ean and open, But to get back to ITMA. We agree that it is right for the few to be deprived in order to spare the blushes of the many, but we should like to call attention to the case of The Wicked Lady, in extenuation of which the Government Film Censor remerked that a certain amount of latitude was allowed when deal ng with the reign of Charles II. We look forward to hearing Handley in- a peruke and ‘Hotchkiss g in a farthingale. i