Great cancellings of the past

[Beagle 2]

I was just reading the section in Fanny Cradock's Wikipedia entry that is rather dramatically labelled: DOWNFALL

In 1976, Gwen Troake, a housewife living in Devon, won the Cook of the Realm competition, leading to the BBC selecting her to organise a banquet to be attended by Edward Heath, Earl Mountbatten of Burma and other notables. The BBC filmed the result as part of a series called The Big Time, and asked Fanny Cradock, by then a tax exile in Ireland, as one of a number of experts who would advise Troake as to the menu.

The result brought the end of Fanny Cradock's television career.[22] Troake went through her menu of seafood cocktail, duckling with bramble sauce and coffee cream dessert. Cradock, grimacing and acting as if on the verge of retching, claimed not to know what a bramble was, told Troake that her menu was too rich, and, though accepting that the dessert was delicious, insisted that it was not suitable. "You're among professionals now, dear," she declared. She scorned Troake's use of an ingredient for being too "English", and insisted that the English have never had their own cuisine, and erroneously claimed that "even the good old Yorkshire pudding comes from Burgundy".

Fanny suggested that Troake use a small pastry boat filled with fruit sorbet and covered with spun sugar, decorated with an orange slice and a cocktail stick through a cherry to give the dish the look of a small boat, suitable, Fanny thought, for the naval guests. In the event, the dessert was a disaster and could not be served properly. Robert Morley had also been consulted on the menu and said he felt that Troake's original coffee pudding was perfect.

When the dessert failed to impress, the public was annoyed that Fanny Cradock had seemingly ruined Troake's special day. The Daily Telegraph wrote "Not since 1940 can the people of England have risen in such unified wrath....".[23] Fanny wrote a letter of apology to Troake, but the BBC terminated her contract two weeks after the broadcast of the programme. She would never again present a cookery programme for the BBC.

That seemed to me to be a very modern sounding set of circumstances. Of course, in 2019 the cancelling wouldn't have taken a fortnight and depending what senior management were on hand at the time it could have been issued within an hour of the incident, probably after @Gwentroakebakelady fired out a series of angry tweets in the taxi on the way home from the event. Sure, Cradock could have tried to walk it back, but she seemed the type to double down after a couple of sherries. However, Fanny's approach of needlessly humiliating members of the public has, of course, now been adopted as standard policy across light entertainment, and in doubling down she could have expected a raft of TV format offers from commercial channels and a column in the Daily Express by the following morning.

How far back can we go with history's great cancellings? Apparently Marie Antoinette never actually said "Let them eat cake", which is a shame, because that was what I was told literally happened for my A Level history exam. I believe this could now lead to a retrospective cancelling for our teacher Mr Holt, but that's a work in progress.

[Jittlebags]

As Clement Freud once observed: "What's the difference between a cross-country run and Fanny Craddock?" "The first is a pant in the country..."

[Beagle 2]

Clement Freud is a hell of a lot more cancelled than Fanny Cradock. 

[Bad Ambassador]

I was just reading the section in Fanny Cradock's Wikipedia entry that is rather dramatically labelled: DOWNFALL.

Who could forget when she ensconced herself in the Fannybunker, before shooting Johnny and then herself?

[thecuriousorange]

Lewis Carroll dodged cancellation by dying many years before it was a thing.

[Ham Bap]

Lewis Carroll dodged cancellation by dying many years before it was a thing.

Dying has always been a thing.

[Butchers Blind]

Who was that guy who told the Sex Pistols to fuck off on live TV?  He got cancelled I'm sure.

[paruses]

Clement Freud is a hell of a lot more cancelled than Fanny Cradock.

It might be that I haven't been in the UK that much over the last few years but this seemed to disappear very quickly. The only think I remember is Paul Merton sort of said that he wasn't surprised and didn't like CF much. Is my memory right?

I suppose that the Freuds are quite a powerful media family and could suppress things - although I'm not really a big conspiracy person; I suppose CF had a more niche audience than Rolf or Stu or DLT, really.

[Norton Canes]

It might be that I haven't been in the UK that much over the last few years but this seemed to disappear very quickly. The only think I remember is Paul Merton sort of said that he wasn't surprised and didn't like CF much. Is my memory right?

I think the opposing HIGNFY team captain mentioned it in error.

Yeah. It was a Freud Ian slip.

[imitationleather]

I'm not an expert, but I think Clement Freud being lumped in with the more outlandish Madeline McCann conspiracy theories may have diluted the actual full fat Coke cancelling that he deserves. He's one of the #cancelled people you only really see mentioned in neverending lists on those all caps world salad establishment paedo blogs.

[Cardenio I]

Who was that guy who told the Sex Pistols to fuck off on live TV?  He got cancelled I'm sure.

Bill "Fucking Rotter" Grundy. Looking at his wiki page it looks like his career did suffer post-Pistols interview, but seems he was something of a lush anyway, a fact which may be responsible for the Pistols car crash in the first place. Per Michael Parkinson:

[Bill was] A difficult man to keep sober, but not to produce. He was one of the best front men I ever worked with...At his best he was a superb forensic interviewer...Sadly, as his career drifted, he let drink overwhelm his personality.

Dirty bastard.

[non capisco]

I've just realised I've never seen a second of footage of Bill Grundy that wasn't the Sex Pistols thing.

[idunnosomename]

Clement Freud has been quietly airbrushed out. In recent Just a Minute retrospectives he was barely mentioned. There are problems with reairing very old episodes because of the contracts guests signed, but even if they changed that by the time BBC 7 launched they never repeat noughties eps either afaik.

If he hadn't died he'd have gone to prison. No doubt.

[Billy]

The Craddock "controversy" sounds like the BBC were sick of her anyway and the reaction to that programme became a convenient excuse to get rid of her, as is usually the case with these things.

I've read elsewhere that, by 2003, Cilla Black had pissed so many people off over the years that she was about to be sacked by ITV at the end of that year's Blind Date series and replaced by someone else (Davina McCall?). Realising this, she "resigned" live on air on her last episode to make it all seem like her choice, so ITV ended the show anyway and replaced it with a Davina McCall one-series copycat the following year.

[Jim Bob]

I've read elsewhere that, by 2003, Cilla Black had pissed so many people off over the years that she was about to be sacked by ITV at the end of that year's Blind Date series and replaced by someone else (Davina McCall?). Realising this, she "resigned" live on air on her last episode to make it all seem like her choice, so ITV ended the show anyway and replaced it with a Davina McCall one-series copycat the following year.

Aye, by all accounts, Cilla Black was a notorious snotty nosed cunt, so I can very much believe this to be true.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Bill "Fucking Rotter" Grundy. Looking at his wiki page it looks like his career did suffer post-Pistols interview, but seems he was something of a lush anyway

He actually says to the Pistols "You're as drunk as I am!"

[Dex Sawash]

Hitler would have been in for a harsh bit of hashtagging

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

He actually says to the Pistols "You're as drunk as I am!"

The use of the word "rotter" was just inspired.

[pigamus]

Len Fairclough

[Butchers Blind]

Michael Barrymore

[The Culture Bunker]

Tony Wilson got Grundy to turn up at the G-Mex in 1986 as part of the 'Festival of the Tenth Summer' thing. I gather the old soak commented that "seldom have I seen so many scruffy cunts in one place", then tried smacking Paul Morley over the head with his walking stick. Which is understandable, really.

[idunnosomename]

Fatty Arbuckle

[jenna appleseed]

He actually says to the Pistols "You're as drunk as I am!"

Somewhere there's a contemporary newspaper reaction article wondering if he'd got them drunk before going on air, with the headline "Where The Pistols Loaded?"

[Sherringford Hovis]

Voting out Winston Churchill after WWII was a classic; the Fifties reboot should never have happened though.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Somewhere there's a contemporary newspaper reaction article wondering if he'd got them drunk before going on air, with the headline "Where The Pistols Loaded?"

Surely somebody would get fired for making such a basic grammatical error?

[Beagle 2]

Fatty Arbuckle

Interesting, why's that then? Sure, I've copied and pasted most of my OP from Wikipedia but I regard that as tireless reseach in the name of quality forum content.

[imitationleather]

Interesting, why's that then? Sure, I've copied and pasted most of my OP from Wikipedia but I regard that as tireless reseach in the name of quality forum content.

He killed a lass by leaping on her in a sex way and making her bladder explode, didn't he?

[Icehaven]

I've read elsewhere that, by 2003, Cilla Black had pissed so many people off over the years that she was about to be sacked by ITV at the end of that year's Blind Date series and replaced by someone else (Davina McCall?). Realising this, she "resigned" live on air on her last episode to make it all seem like her choice, so ITV ended the show anyway and replaced it with a Davina McCall one-series copycat the following year.

I may be wrong about this but I don't think Blind Date was aired live, was it? Or does 'live' in this instance just mean in front of the studio audience?

[Egyptian Feast]

He killed a lass by leaping on her in a sex way and making her bladder explode, didn't he?

Apparently she was suffering from cystitis & venereal disease and Fatty may not have had anything to do with her death, but people are still debating the case. Paul Merton did a decent doc about the story a few years back.

[H-O-W-L]

Bill "Fucking Rotter" Grundy. Looking at his wiki page it looks like his career did suffer post-Pistols interview, but seems he was something of a lush anyway, a fact which may be responsible for the Pistols car crash in the first place. Per Michael Parkinson:

Dirty bastard.

He starts going all Savile-like toward Siouxsie Sioux (she's at the back with the blonde hair) in that interview and that's why the Pistols start calling him a filthy fucking bastard (because he is). I back the Pistols 100% in that interview despite not being a big fan of them, purely because they tell him to fuck off like the cunt he is.