Mind Your Language
Mind Your Language was a British comedy series shown on ITV, between 1977 and 1979. Produced by LWT, it was set in a language school in London, with the late Barry Evans as the English language teacher.
The series 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.
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, including Australia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore, and was one of the first British TV programmes shown in South Africa after the end of the boycott by British Equity. It was even resurrected, briefly, for the export market by an independent producer, in the late 1980s.
Jamilla Massey who played the indian lady Jamila Rahjha is now appearing as a character in BBC Radio 4's long-running soap opera The Archers.
