No Rock And Roll Fun

THEY FIRMLY SLAP THEMSELVES: What we love best about the latest BBC Quarterly Complaints bulletin [pdf], besides the way the team producing it seems to have been drawn from Daily Mail reading old ladies - "Ooh, it was dreadful. We'll have a word with them" - is the coy way it talks about the Eminem incident:

Top of the Pops BBC One, 9 April 2004
The complaint
Twelve viewers complained that one of the performances included lewd and offensive gestures.
Finding
The performer had been asked to tone his act down after rehearsal but had ignored this request during the live broadcast. Although his gestures were part of the rap culture, they had gone beyond what is expected in a programme aimed at a family audience.
Further action
On the next occasion on which the performance was broadcast, an edited version of the recording of the dress rehearsal was used.

What's brilliant about this is the totally non-specific nature of the report. We know it was Eminem grabbing his crotch, but the way its worded, it could have been Dannii Minogue pretending to fist-fuck one of her dancers, or Cliff Richard flicking Vs.

Amongst other music-related complaints were Sybil Ruscoe getting ticked off for saying that "a lot of misery... came out of the Thatcher years for a lot of people" - apparently, this was partial because it wasn't "accompanied by any acknowledgement of more positive views" - so next time, Sybil, remember: "a lot of misery came out of the Thatcher years, unless you were an overpaid fatcat who got their pockets stuffed with our cash as the evil cow flogged off every national asset she could lay her hands on, or the manufacturers of novelty helmet pencil sharpeners who found demand increasing as she closed down as many mines as possible destroying any hope of a future for entire communities but creating dozens of opportunities for Mining Heritage Centres to open."

Also, Colin Murray was made to squirm again over his accidental "fuck" on air "in a moment of excitement." The producers have pledged to ensure that it won't happen again, and to be fair to them, we haven't heard a single moment of excitement on the Colin and Edith show since.