Today I was singing and storytelling at a local festival with a heavy eco/green agenda, sitting in a yurt (yup) where I was taking turns with a man doing a magic show. We had time between my arrival and his show to chat, and he told me he was originally booked to do a Punch and Judy show, which he's been doing professionally for 27 years. However, two weeks back he was contacted and asked NOT to do the Punch and Judy, on the grounds that the content might be considered offensive. What content, he asked. That stuff with the crocodile, he was told. After all, crocodiles are wild creatures and should be associated with The Wild rather than with the theft of sausages. And that business with the baby. What business with the baby, he asked, as he doesn't do baby bashing or wife bashing in his show, just a few jokes about baby sitting when Punch sits on the baby. No, no, he was told, but if there's a baby people will think about sex.
Now, you might be forgiven for thinking we were saving some very sensitive souls from dreadful subversions here, but the audiences at this festival don't live in some rarefied atmosphere where the table legs have to be covered up in case they make us think about other legs and what they might lead to. The children at this festival watch cartoons and tv shows and DVDs, and play computer games, in which there are far more worrying things than a crocodile stealing sausages or a strangely mis-shaped puppet sitting on a strangely mis-shaped puppet baby, talking in voices that are clearly not real. And I'm quite sure they've seen babies before.
What WERE the organisers thinking?
Has anyone come across anything else as plainly daft as this?
His magic show was good, by the way, but a Punch and Judy would have been great, as well as being a taste of a traditional entertainment. Ah, well.
He thought it was all to do with "political correctness" but for the life of me I can't see the connection. Just daftness.

Anne