Dr Finlay (R) - a pro-life fiend.
Apparently, a woman came into Dr Finlay's surgery with a young baby who was suffering from an ear infection. Dr Finlay, a staunch Catholic, was quite shocked when the lady said "Well, let's just terminate this one, and I'll have another one, with genetically superior ears." Instead he insulted her by dropping some ear drops into the baby's ear, and sending her home.
Should babies with earache be allowed to continue living?
The Edinburgh Pro-Choice Association (joint presidents, William Burke and William Hare) is up in arms at Dr Finlay's religious bigotry. It has vowed to get him thrown out of his profession, and to prevent all shopkeepers and tradesmen from serving him, in the hope that he and his family will do the decent thing and starve to death. "How is the body-snatching industry going to survive if doctors insist on saving lives?" they asked.
Meanwhile, further turmoil hit the BBC today after the arrest of Bill the Flowerpotman. Mr Flowerpotman is currently under investigation by the police for alleged sexual harassment of Miss Weed on various occasions in the 1960s, although he has consistently claimed that it was his brother Ben who was guilty.
Bill (sex fiend?) and Ben, with Miss Weed, in happier times.
It seems that Mr Flowerpotman was due to chair the next edition of the news quiz game show Have I got news for you? - his verbal skills being considered far superior to those of Ian Hislop and Paul Merton. Hislop, one of the stars of the programme, took time off from thinking of sexual jokes about Catholics for his once-funny magazine Private Eye to comment "Flobadob!" before dissolving into gales of laughter at his own wit.
Finally, Boston College, the Jesuit University, has confirmed that it will be awarding an honorary degree to Dr Kermit Gosnell, the controversial doctor. "After we awarded one to Enda Kenny, it was a natural step to take," commented a spokesman. "One of our mottoes is Αἰέν ἀριστεύειν (ever to excel) and we look for people who stand out from the crowd, no matter how repulsive they are."
Religioni et Bonis Artibus - but we don't take this too seriously.
I'm sure the lady concerned had a more sympathetic hearing from Dr Snoddy.
ReplyDelete"I'm sorry I haven't a clue" is much more suited to Ian Hislop's mental age.
ReplyDeleteApparently, The Flowerpot Men were the main inspiration for the St Louis Jesuits' "Earthen Vessels".
ReplyDeleteEccles, I am sorry to have to correct you but the esteemed casebook of Dr Finlay (at one time edited by my father, Barry Thomas) was before the time of "issues" in soap opera.
ReplyDeleteLater (again edited by my father) East Enders began bringing in political and social "issues", and Coronation Street and the other soaps responded. I can say quite categorically that any pro-life or abortion issues that a script writer may have wanted to bring into the Finlay saga would have been blue-pencilled immediately by my father, who would have seen "issues" as quite distracting from the audience engagement with the anodine BBC social drama.
Of course, these days the BBC people do not make programmes at all. They just make deals.
Actually the original Dr Finlay stories, based as they were on the experiences of AJ Cronin, the Catholic authior, deal with a lot of the public health issues of the 1920s. Who can forget the episode when Janet nearly poisoned Lord Bellamy (David Langton) by sloppy care of her knives, and where Private Walker (James Beck) gets blood poisoning in the arm he has used to punch Dr Finlay with. Oh! and the one where the District nurse gets Foot and Mouth. That gave me nightmares for weeks.
ReplyDeleteYes, of course. But "issues" only really became "issues" when they reflected a left liberal agenda. E.g. promoting a gay lifestyle in East Enders in the 1980s. My father as script editor used my own experience as a church worker in East London to explore the AIDS issue through the story line. It had to be done from a left liberal point of view. And yet -please mark this carefully - he maintained his South Wales working class attitude towards homosexuals while working on that programme (in a strange kind of doublethink) and told me he had "no sympathy for these queers who deserve all the plagues that fall upon them".
ReplyDeleteThat is what I understand by the cynical manipulation of "issues" by those liberal lefties who do not even have the conviction but simply bask in the audience figures!
Sorry, with East Enders I am probably referring to 1990/1991, not the 1980s.
ReplyDeleteSome of the comments here are too long for me to read!
ReplyDelete