Reeves and Mortimer Complaints

Reference: 01233805 Alexander Mapletoft Information Rights Advisor [email protected]

10 May 2021

Freedom of Information: Right to know request Thank you for your request for information in relation to complaints of racism in Reeves and Mortimer programmes. We received this request on 13 April 2021 and have considered it under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

You asked: “Broadly speaking, I am looking for information pertaining complaints of racism cast against any television programs written by or starring Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer from the following programs: The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, Shooting Stars, Bang Bang Its Reeves and Mortimer, Foster’s Afternoon Delights with Reeves and Mortimer.

Specifically, I would like to know if there were any complaints of racism for sketches from The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer in 1993 - one such sketch featured the duo playing Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye.”

Background We understand that the programmes listed in your FOI request (excluding Foster’s Afternoon Delights) originally aired on the BBC. By way of background, we would therefore like to provide some information about Ofcom’s remit regarding broadcast content standards in BBC programming.

Ofcom is required under the Communications Act 2003 to set and apply standards for the content of programmes to be included in television and radio services in the UK. These standards are set out in the Ofcom Broadcasting Code (“the Code”) and include a range of provisions, including that members of the public are adequately protected from offensive and harmful material. Complaints of racism would likely fall under this section of the Code and would be logged under the category “race discrimination/offence”.

We took up our role as the independent regulator of the BBC on 22 March 2017. Ofcom’s process for handling complaints concerning content standards in BBC programming are published on our website. Ofcom can normally only respond to and consider complaints about content on the BBC’s broadcasting services where the complainant has already complained to the BBC and the BBC has reached its final decision. This is known as the ‘BBC First’ process. For complaints that we received prior to 22 March 2017, we considered complaints about BBC programmes under the Code except for issues of due impartiality and accuracy which fell under the remit of the BBC Trust at the time.

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Complaints about content standards on broadcasting services other than the BBC are handled under Ofcom’s Procedures for investigating breaches of content standards for television, radio and video- on-demand services.

Our response While all decisions about complaints received by Ofcom since 2003 are published in Ofcom’s Broadcast and On Demand Bulletin (“the Bulletin”) on our website, we only hold searchable information on our complaints database for cases from 2014 onwards. We have conducted a search of our database and confirm that Ofcom has not received any complaints of racism about any Reeves and Mortimer programmes broadcast on either the BBC or other broadcasting services since 2014.

For the period between 2003 and 2014, you can retrieve relevant information about complaints by manually searching the bulletins on our website. For the period before 2003, when the Reeves and Mortimer programmes originally aired, complaints would have been handled by the Broadcasting Standards Commission (BSC). All BSC bulletins are publicly available on the National Archives website. Our search of these found no complaints of racism in relation to Reeves and Mortimer programmes.

You may wish to contact or request the information from the BBC directly to pursue your inquiry further.

I hope this information is helpful. If you have any queries, then please contact [email protected]. Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

Yours sincerely,

Alexander Mapletoft

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