Gold rapped over 10am screening

Digital TV station Gold has been rapped for showing a sexually suggestive episode of Gavin And Stacey at 10am.

A viewer complained to regulator Ofcom over an episode that was rerun in February, detailing a catalogue of rude references in the episode when the two title characters and best friends Nessa and Stacey go back to a hotel room.

The show originally went out post-watershed on BBC Three in 2007, but Gold aired a cleaned up version supposed to be suitable for a wider audience - with stronger language and sounds of the characters having sex taken out.

However, that was not enough for the watchdogs who ruled: ‘The overall tone and cumulative impact of the sexual language and references throughout the programme resulted in this material being of a more adult nature and which made this episode unsuitable for scheduling on a Saturday morning.’

The viewers’s list of complaints included:

• An opening scene outside Stacey‟s house where she talks to her elderly neighbour, Doris, about her first date with Gavin. Doris advises Stacey ‘Don’t go giving him nothing on the first night ... well not nothing ... a kiss, a cuddle, a cheeky finger – just don‟t go selling him the whole farm’
• A scene where Smithy asks Gavin, ‘You got any johnnies? I ain’t going in there bareback’; to which Nessa replied: ‘Don‟t worry I’ve got a stash – ribbed’
• A scene at the hotel where Nessa makes clear they to have sex, reaches her hand towards Smithy’s genitals and says: ‘I hopes you're hungry big boy,' as she slaps his backside
• A scene the next morning when Smithy wakes up after spending the night with Nessa and tells Gavin, ‘I feel like 've been abused. The guilt...She did things. She put things in... did Stacey stick things in?’ He then gets out of bed wearing Nessa‟s red lacy thong which reveals his buttocks
• A scene where Nessa tells a coach driver is ‘riddled’ as she looks down at his genital area
• Various examples of offensive language, for example: ‘bloody’, ‘shit’, ‘takes the piss’, ‘cacking myself’, ‘prick’ and ‘bugger’.

Gold’s owners UKTV said it thought Ofcom’s ruling was harsh as it had ‘made a conscious effort to remove offensive language and any of the more explicit sexual scenes/references, leaving only some mild language and light, oblique sexual references.’

Yet the watchdog concluded: ‘The programme included a number of sexual references which were not necessarily sexually explicit but, in Ofcom‟s view, clearly exceeded comic innuendo and were aimed at a more adult audience.

‘The programme included the frequent use of offensive language. This (taken together with the sexual themes and references) underlined that, despite the edits to the original programme, it still contained a considerable amount of content of an adult audience.

Published: 9 Jul 2012