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Filth!

Watching the repeat of Filth! The Mary Whitehouse story on the BBC last night, I was again surprised that Julie Walters had agreed to appear in it. To me, Ms Walters seems a liberal-minded person, almost the opposite of Mrs Whitehouse, and she admitted in an interview when the play was first shown that she never agreed with Whitehouse's views. And yet, it seemed to me that the play was much too sympathetic to Whitehouse, portraying her as a bit misguided and sometimes comical, but basically a nice, "cuddly" sort of person. This was never my impression of her - many of her pronouncements showed her as vindictive and intolerant in the extreme. The play also seemed unfair on Sir Hugh Greene, ex Director-General of the BBC, portraying him as a boorish, closed-minded buffoon and apparently ignoring the good work he did in "opening out" TV drama in the 1960s.

Trawling around for more information on the programme and the Whitehouse legacy (she died in 2001), I found this very interesting article about Whitehouse's relationship with her family.
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