‘allo ‘allo

The other day, I received an email with the subject line “YouTube removed your content”. Oh dear, what have I done now?

“It looks like [your video] didn’t follow our Community Guidelines. We removed it from YouTube.

We think your content violated our hate speech policy.”

What the fuck?

“Content that promotes hateful supremacism by alleging the superiority of a group over those with protected group status to justify violence, discrimination, segregation, or exclusion isn’t allowed on YouTube. We review educational, documentary, artistic, and scientific content on a case-by-case basis. Limited exceptions are made for content with sufficient and appropriate context.”

Right, OK. I instantly appealed, and ten minutes later, got back the following reply:

We reviewed [your video] again and confirmed it’s not allowed under our hate speech policy.

Your video won’t be put back on YouTube.

We understand this may be frustrating, but we’re committed to keeping YouTube a safe place for everyone.

Our goal is to help you succeed on YouTube. We encourage you to take a look at our Community Guidelines and keep them in mind when posting content in the future.

So what was this totally outrageous video on my account?

A clip from ‘Allo ‘Allo, “The Confusion of the Generals”, transmitted on 12th November 1988.

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'allo 'allo

Hans, Kurt, Rene and Helga

What an excellent time for BBC One to broadcast an episode of ‘Allo ‘Allo. True, it was done in tribute to Gorden Kaye who died on Monday, but it feels like this was a good week to laugh at some Nazis.

However, you know me by now. Ignore the laughter, or moral truths, we all know why we’re really here. “Oh, I wonder whether there have been any edits made to the show…” And blow my chickens up, there has been. To clarify then, here’s the two versions of the episode Pigeon Post I’m comparing:

The episode broadcast on BBC One on Wednesday 25th January at 7:30pm, with a duration of 28’56”.
The version Playback released on DVD in Region 2 way back in August 2002, with a duration of 31’39”.

In other words, the version broadcast by BBC One on Wednesday is 2’43” shorter than the version on DVD.

Without either an off-air of the very original broadcast or paperwork to hand¹, we’re left with a bit of guesswork – but I think we can work out what happened with reasonable certainty. The longer version on DVD is probably the original broadcast (aside from the episode title caption), and the episode broadcast on Wednesday is a cut-down version for repeat transmission to fit a standard slot – which I suspect is the version the BBC have been showing for years.²

Let’s see what’s missing, shall we? Cuts to the repeat broadcast are indicated like this.

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At some point, I’ll go down to the BBC Written Archives and hopefully be able to clarify some of these articles. ↩
It’s on record that David Croft was meddling with Are You Being Served? in the 90s to tighten up the episodes for the repeats, so it wouldn’t surprise me if these edits to ‘Allo ‘Allo were done at roughly the same time. ↩

What a Mistake-a to Make-a

‘Allo ‘Allo: Pigeon Post