The Mary Whitehouse Experience

The Mary Whitehouse Experience was a UK topical comedy show, both on radio and TV, in the late '80s/early '90s. Its main stars were David Baddiel, Rob Newman, Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis.

It started in 1989 as a radio show, devised by Bill Dare, on BBC Radio 1. The two pairings of Newman and Baddiel and Punt and Dennis were central to the show - they would later have spin-off television series of their own. Guest performers included Nick Hancock, Jo Brand, Jack Dee, and Mark Thomas.

It had four radio series, building up an audience and moving to better time slots. After the fourth series, it was decided to move the show to television. The television run started in 1991 on BBC 2. It lasted two series, a total of 13 episodes including its pilot, and obtained the honour of being the first programme to use the word 'wanker' on broadcast television in the UK. A spin-off book of the show was also published.

Famous sketches and running gags included the dad with the inability to dance; Ray, a man afflicted with a sarcastic tone of voice; Rob Newman's impression of Jonathan Ross; the "milky milky" man (the weird man in town your mother always warned you about) and, perhaps most famously in the second half of the second series, 'History Today' - two old men trying to conduct a serious history discussion TV show, but spend it throwing playground insults at each other. Robert Smith, lead singer of British rock band The Cure, made a guest appearance on one show in which Newman impersonated him.

The show was named after Mary Whitehouse, a prominent campaigner against what she saw as a decline in television standards and public morality. She threatened legal action against the show for its name.

Although the BBC has a huge back catalogue of comedy available on Videotape and DVD, the television series is notable for never having been released nor repeated. Episodes of the radio series have been repeated on BBC 7.