Just occasionally, my silly research for this site turns up something wonderful.
So, there I was, perusing the archives of that august organ Huddersfield Daily Examiner, when I spotted the following Channel 4 programme scheduled on the 30th November 1992:
11:00 CATHOLICS AND SEX Examining the Catholic Church’s attitudes towards birth-control and pre-marital sex. Catholic women talk about the ban on contraception, and teenagers give their views on virginity. A bishop gives an unusual justification of the Church’s teachings…
So far, so normal.
…and comedienne Caroline Aherne provides an alternative interpretation.
Oh, hello there.
This would be Caroline Aherne just pre-stardom. The Fast Show was a couple of years away, but by now she was appearing as Mrs Merton on programmes like Channel 4’s own Remote Control:
But I’d never heard of her appearance in Catholics and Sex. And frankly, it felt like I would be unlikely to ever see it. After all, who is going to bother uploading a copy online?
Answer: Reuters Screenocean has. And, predictably, it features Aherne as Sister Mary Immaculate, talking about contraception.1 I’m not going to be cheeky, rip that video and upload it here, but the two short sections with Caroline are at 10:13:41 and 10:32:54.
The whole thing is very worth watching, actually. I’m very at home with early-90s Channel 4 documentary-making. Anything with inserts shot on film in black and white I find extremely comforting.
This is the second of four episodes; the other three have contributions from John Hegley, Bruce Morton, and Sean Hughes. ↩