Amla and Mind Your Language

....guilt of stereotyping

South African cricketer, Hashim Amla was called ''a terrorist'' by Dean Jones, cricket commentator, who was sacked by his employer as a result. This happened in the recent series against Sri Lanka. In recent days Dean Jones's defenders have made interesting arguments in mitigation.

Allan Border argued that calling Hashem Amla a terrorist wasn't so bad because he knew for a fact that Amla's team mates called him that to his face. Except that they didn't. Gordon Templeton, the South African team's media manager bluntly described Border's claim as nonsense. Border, he said, was trying to shield Jones: no South African team member had ever used 'terrorist' as a nickname for Amla.

The whole issue is of racial stereotyping. But who are we to judge?? We Sri Lankans thoroughly enjoyed a TV comedy series, which had racial stereotyping as the basis of its storyline. A quick recap of the series Mind your Language, serves to make us ask ourselves, weren't we guilty as a whole nation??

Here are some quotes that Mind Your Language fans would recall, and something from that series.

Dear Reader, what would you say??

Ali Nadim (Pakistani) : "Squeeze me please!", "Oh Blimey!", "Jolly Good","U damn fool!"

Giovanni Cupello (Italian) : "Santa Maria!", "Holy Ravioli!"

Maximillian Papandrious (Greek) : "Hokay!"

Jamila Rahjha (Indian) : "God heavening!"

Deloris Courtney (the prim-and-proper English headmistress) : "MISS Courtney, if you don't mind."

Ranjeet Singh (Punjabi) : "A thousand apologies."

Chung Su-Lee (Chinese) : "Chairman Mao, he says..." "The Democlatic Lepublic Of China", "...peace-roving Chinese!"

Taro Nagazumi (Japanese) : "Ah-so" (proceeds forward and bows)

Juan Cervantes (Spanish) : "Por favor?","s'awright", "One fate/fete/fit, Two fate/fete/fit!"

Zoltan Szabo (Hungarian) : "Bocs nat?"

Anna Schmidt (German) : "Wery Good!"

Gladys the tea lady (English) : "Her ladyship wants to see you"

Jeremy Brown (English) : "Is the old dragon in?"

Sid the caretaker (English) : "You sure you got the right cucumber?"

The series Mind your Language was known for its humorous take on national stereotypes: the German woman was dour and humourless; the French woman was sexy and flirtatious; the Swedish woman was liberated and straightforwardly sex-mad; the Chinese woman a rampant Maoist; while the Sikh and Pakistani men were often on the brink of war, and the Spaniard, the Greek and the Italian were macho.

Much of the humour also stemmed from the trouble the students had with the English language, their often outrageous speech patterns and the students' hilarious mispronunciations of English. In the politically correct days of the late 1990s the show was criticised, but in its day the show was popular with people of many backgrounds because of its light-hearted take on multiculturalism and because it gave some otherwise unrepresented minorities a television presence.

It was cancelled in 1979 by Michael Grade, then LWT's Deputy Controller of Entertainment, who considered the stereotyping offensive. Nevertheless it was sold to other countries where it found amazing popularity, including Pakistan, Australia, Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia and Singapore .

It was also one of the first British TV programmes shown in South Africa after the end of the boycott by Equity. It was even resurrected, briefly, for the export market by an independent producer, in the late 1980s. Only Granada Television transmitted the final 13 episodes consecutively as a complete series. Some ITV companies didn't show any of the episodes made in 1986.

The programme was remade for US television as What a Country! In India, a comedy serial based on Mind Your Language was aired on DD2. In the programme Zaban Sambhal Ke (Hindi for Mind Your Language) people from diverse regional Indian background studied Hindi. Promoted by the TV Times as 'the new multi-racial comedy series', Mind Your Language proved hugely popular with the viewing public. Cheerfully basic and almost entirely devoid of subtlety, the programme was based around a simple premise that rarely varied. Episodes focussed on English language classes taken by Mr Brown, and involved his frustrated attempts to teach a class of diverse foreign students.

Character development was kept to a minimum, with the comedy firmly fixed on misunderstandings of English language and customs, and the relentless exploitation of obvious national stereotypes.

To modern audiences, Mind Your Language and its depiction of cultural integration cannot but seem clumsy, banal, inept, wilfully ignorant and frequently offensive. There is little to recommend it, and in retrospect it is difficult to discern the reason for the series' widespread appeal.

However, the cast is more competent and accomplished than the limitations of the series' scripts and one-dimensional characterisations will allow. Seemingly oblivious to the failings of their material, they approach their performances with energy, vigour and apparent enthusiasm.

Perhaps it was this likeable cast, serving up sizeable portions of ancient and uncomplicated schoolboy humour, presented with an absolute lack of pretension, that made the programme such a big hit in the 1970s' weekend schedules. It ran for three series, was briefly revived in the mid-Eighties, and, apparently, even spawned a live stage show in Blackpool.

Barry Evans is well cast as the amiable Mr Brown, still exploiting the boyish innocence of his earlier roles in Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (d. Clive Donner, 1967) and ITV's Doctor series. Evans had virtually vanished from the screen since his earlier successes, barring appearances in a couple of dubious sex comedies.

Hard up and on the dole, he was offered the starring role in Mind Your Language when he wrote to LWT bluntly informing them "I'm still alive".