1965 Asked during the course of a live debate whether he would allow sex to be represented on stage, the theatre critic and producer replied: ‘Well, I think so, certainly. I doubt if there are any rational people to whom the word “fuck” would be particularly diabolical, revolting or totally forbidden. I think that anything which can be printed or said can also be seen.’ Hard to imagine a time when ‘fuck’ could cause such a furore, now that it’s become a commonplace in every ‘reality’ TV show from Big Brother to Come Dine With Me, and a celebrity chef even has a programme named after it. But this was the first time the word had been spoken on British television, and for a time Tynan became the most infamous man in public life – exactly his intention.
The satirical magazine Private Eye’s hilarity was unbounded. Pointing out that Tynan’s stammer had created the first thirteen-syllable four-letter word in history, they lampooned the original debate in their 26 November issue:
Millions of viewers were surprised last night … when in the course of a discussion of the nature of charity between the Lord Chamberlain, the Bishop of Hampstead and dramaturg Kenneth Tynan, Mr Tynan was seen to make a certain gesture involving in no small measure the glans penis.
He then said, ‘In this day and age a quick flash is in no way shocking or offensive. If it has been done in a book, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be brought to life on the screen’.
The dramaturg was as good as his word – as soon as the law allowed. Four and a half years later, after the Theatres Act had abolished the Lord Chamberlain’s power of stage censorship (see 26 September), he produced Oh! Calcutta! This was not (as some bemused subcontinental tourists supposed) about the problems of India’s most overcrowded city. The title punned on the French for ‘Oh what a lovely arse!’ (‘O quel cul t’as!’) ‘Mr Tynan’s Nude Review’ (The Times’s frosty description) gathered together sketches from different hands – some crude, some subtle – mixed up with song and dance. John Lennon, Joe Orton, and Samuel Beckett were among Tynan’s best-known contributors. Lennon’s piece featured a masturbation rite, each member (members dangling) calling out women’s names to stimulate fantasy. Suddenly one interjects ‘Frank Sinatra’. Members droop catastrophically.
Oh! Calcutta! opened at London’s Roundhouse Theatre, a converted railway shed, on 20 July 1970. Since the theatre was Arts Council-supported, feathers were predictably ruffled by ‘state handouts for filth’. Tynan revelled in such controversy and did his utmost to whip up pre-event publicity by having a series of packed ‘previews’ in advance of opening night. The (anonymous) Times staff reporter who attended one such event was typically disapproving:
It will prove of interest to those excited by the prospect of unclothed ladies and gentlemen cavorting in a stuffy former engine shed … it will bore most adults … If it was for this that the battle against the censor was fought and won, then the struggle was barely worth it.
There ensued a fevered correspondence in the paper. Tynan’s contribution to it was sublimely insolent.
Sir,
Lord Drogheda joins several of your other correspondents in ascribing to me the phrase ‘tasteful pornography’. What ever his lordship may have read, I have never used this expression to describe Oh! Calcutta! or anything else. I have a horror of the word ‘tasteful’.
Yours etc.
Kenneth Tynan