Hot Bed of Depravity

As I predicted, desperate to maintain some momentum for the Jimmy Savile scandal, the tabloid press is now desperately dredging up allegations against anybody who worked at the BBC in the 1970s and is now dead, (thereby avoiding the risk of legal action).  Over the weekend it was the late Leonard Rossiter being accused.  The gist of The Sun's ludicrous story is that back in 1972, when filming Nigel Kneale's Year of the Sex Olympics at the BBC, Rossiter supposedly witnessed the sexual assault of a male extra by another individual, and did nothing.  Indeed, according to the paper's source - who also witnessed the assault but said nothing about it for forty years - he looked like he might have been enjoying watching it.  An anonymous source who takes four decades to get outraged enough to report an alleged sexual assault, not to the police, but to a tabloid newspaper.  But perhaps, at the time, he thought it wasn't unusual.  After all, according to the source, back in the 1970s the BBC was a hot bed of depravity.

Still, taken at face value, these allegations against Rossiter put a whole new spin on the dynamics of the relationships in the 1970s sitcom Rising Damp.  No wonder Rigsby had such an interest in Philip and Alan, the young men who lodged in the attic room.  He was always either lurking outside their door or going through their things whilst they were out.  I've no doubt that there also cut scenes where he kept walking into the bathroom whenever one or other of them were in the bath or shower.  It also now becomes clear why he never got anywhere with Miss Jones - his supposed interest in her was clearly just a cover.  "Ohhh Miss Jones, that Philip, what a fine figure of a man he is - all that raw primitive passion.  Not to mention the way he handles his loofah in the bath..."   Seen in this light the love triangle between Rigsby, Philip and Miss Jones takes on a whole new dimension.  Actually, Rossiter's other hit sitcom, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin can also be reinterpreted after these 'revelations' about him.  Maybe Reggie's reasons for faking his own death had less to do with his desire to escape the rat race than the fact that he feared the net was closing on him with regard to his extracurricular activities.  And when he did reappear under a new identity, he was sporting a beard of the type favoured by stereotypical sex offenders...