CENSORSHIP of film and television has become a joke. All kinds of smut, crude remarks and scenes of explicit sex are broadcast. Nothing is left to the imagination!

I am not a prude, but is all this really needed to produce a film or a TV programme? Or is it just a marketing ploy to appeal to the seedier instincts of the public.

The film "Little Voice", which received rave reviews from the critics, would have lost most of its script if the bad language had been edited out.

And what about the latest Austin Powers movie? Which man of letters thought of that title? I dread to think what future films might be called.

I can't remember anything seedy about the blockbusters "Titanic", "Bridge on the River Kwai" or the classic "Gone With the Wind". And these films didn't do badly, did they?

People may say that if you don't want to watch, turn it off. Why should we? We all pay our licence or admission fee. Surely it is up to the censors to impose more morality and decency.

K. SOWERBUTTS

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.