Don't Mention God
It's nearly Christmas but we can't mention God.
As you know we are not very PC or in awe of Health and Safety we just believe in common sense, (it is not an old fashioned virtue) so we thought mentioning God at Christmas time seemed reasonable.
We wanted to do a Christmas Radio advert, it was about embracing the whole Christmas shopping experience and we were quoting Shakespeare, the 'Once more into the breach' speech from Henry V.
We liked the bit where the King shouts 'Cry God for Harry, England and St. George'.
We were told we could not mention God for fear of alienating and offending people of a non christian belief. We said we were not mentioning God, Shakespeare was. The nice lady from the Radio Watchdog Third Reich Council thingy knew Shakespeare was dead so refrained from asking us to speak to Mr. Shakespeare and get him to change the text but we were expecting her to ask.
We refused to censure Shakespeare for anyone so we pulled the advert.
The thing is that the very fact we were advertising our Christmas Specials was a non-secular expression of Christmas, we were exploiting the whole religious event that is Christmas and so the Radio Council Third Reich people should have objected to us advertising at all.
Jesus/God/The Holy Spirit didn't heal the sick, assault the moneylenders, be crucified for the sins of man so that M&S could advertise their Chocolate Pudding or so that we could flog our Woolly Jumpers.
This we could accept but those floodgates opened long ago and although we are re-inventing the wheel that is the relationship between price and quality in British textiles we are not about to start on the rules of the Radio world.
Not being able to mention God at Christmas time on the radio in a commercial is absolutely bonkers.
Be afraid, very afraid, these people are running the place!
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