Nowt as queer as folk on children’s TV programmes

The spokesman for purple, handbag-toting Tellytubbie Tinky Winky is in denial to suggestions that Tinky Winky is gay. The spokesman for Itsy Bitsy Entertainment says: “To think we would be putting sexual innuendo into a children’s show is kind of outlandish. I find it perverse and kind of offensive.”

Perverse? Outlandish? Not so. Merely following a fine tradition in children’s programming.

In the Fifties Captain Pugwash, Seaman Stains, Master Bates and Willy gave Tom the Cabin Boy a hard time. While in the Sixties, Bill and Ben’s love of “Weed” rendered them incapable of saying anything other than “flobadob”.

Emma Thomson’s dad Eric had a double entendre field-day doing voiceovers on the Magic Roundabout, where hippy drug dealing rabbit Dylan routinely fed “sugar lumps” to Dougal.

Today’s toddlers will be none the worse off for watching queer Tellytubbies mincing around an acidic landscape. It never did us any harm, did it?

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