The BBC is re-running Fawlty Towers to cheer Britain up - but with racist outbursts from cantankerous Major Gowan removed.
The classic comedy, which runs to 12 episodes, airs from March 15 in its Festival of Funny.
Last year writer and star John Cleese, who plays Basil Fawlty, branded Beeb bosses “gutless” for temporarily removing the episode with the Major’s racist remarks from the UKTV streaming platform.
Arguing the remarks were fine in context, he said: “The major was an old fossil.
We were not supporting his views, we were making fun of them.
“If people are too stupid to see that, what can one say?”
But in 2013, he agreed to the words being cut from a BBC2 pre-watershed repeat.
At the time some viewers accused the BBC of “airbrushing history”.
Writing on the BBC’s Points of View message board, one sighed: “The major is a racist old bigot, incongruous with modern society.
“The audience isn’t supposed to agree with him, they’re supposed to laugh at him.”
In the scene from The Germans, first aired in 1975, Major Gowan, played by Ballard Berkeley, talks of taking a woman to see India play cricket and uses the n-word.
A separate episode, The Anniversary, starts with the Fawlty Towers sign re-arranged into a rude anagram, which is also cut.
The BBC said removing offensive language was policy for shows airing before 9pm and met Ofcom’s language guidance. The series is available on iPlayer from Monday.
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