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Tim Minchin song cut from Jonathan Ross Show

A controversial song from Tim Minchin gets the chop from The Jonathan Ross Show after execs get nervous about its lyrics.

Tonight ABC1 will screen The Jonathan Ross Show but it may now be without a new song from Tim Minchin, whose song was cut by ITV execs.

Minchin has accused ITV’s Director of Television, Peter Fincham, of dropping the song Woody Allen Jesus out of fear of offending some viewers.

In typical Michin-style, he likened the resurrection of Jesus to the 1978 horror film Dawn of the Dead, singing: “Try that these days you’d be in trouble, geeks would try to smack you with a shovel.”

“Jesus lives forever, which is pretty odd, but not as odd as his fetish for drinking blood.

“Jesus’ mother gave birth to him without having sex with a dude, no she would never be that rude, never even been nude with a dude.”

“Breeding without the opposite gender is commonly known as parthenogenesis, other animals that don’t need males include a lot of lizards and various snails.”

Minchin later wrote in a blog post it was a silly, harmless, accurate song of praise.

“I thought it would be fun to do a song about Jesus, but being TV, I knew it would have to be gentle. The idea was to compare him to Woody Allen (short, Jewish, philosophical, a bit hesitant), and expand into redefining his other alleged attributes using modern, popular-culture terminology,” he wrote.

Minchin said he had been asked to write the piece at the request of producers who had approved it.

“And then someone got nervous and sent the tape to ITV’s director of television, Peter Fincham.

“And Peter Fincham demanded that I be cut from the show.”

“He did this because he’s scared of the ranty, s–t stirring, right-wing press, and of the small minority of Brits who believe they have a right to go through life protected from anything that challenges them in any way.”

Host Jonathon Ross wrote on Twitter: “Really gutted that the brilliant Tim Minchin song has been cut from my show. Decision was out of my hands,” he wrote on Twitter.

An ITV spokesman said: “We often make changes to programmes before transmission and on this occasion we felt that the song didn’t quite work editorially.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SFdUJLebzU[/youtube]

Source: The Age

8 Responses

  1. After watching the entire (edited) J.R. Christmas Show last night on ABC, Tim Minchin’s song, if included, would’ve been the nights highlight. Tim had me hanging on to every word.

  2. I’m a huge fan of Tim Minchin, but he and Jonathan Ross would have to be deliberately obtuse to think that there wasn’t the possibility this would get cut. This sort of thing will always offend someone, and at Christmas time it does border on tactless.

    It was probably great, but this is hardly unexpected.

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