RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: So that's why they call it a Trigger warning

Order Turmeric Curcumin Plus: RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: So that's why they call it a Trigger warning. Classic television comedies will carry health warnings to avoid offending the sensibilities of modern audiences.

BritBox, a new subscription streaming service featuring shows from the BBC and ITV back catalogues, will flag up content which might upset some viewers.

Programmes such as Till Death Us Do Part and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum will not appear at all, having been deemed racist.

Others, including Fawlty Towers and Only Fools and Horses, will be shown, but with advance warnings that they contain language which some people may find offensive.

An ITV executive said: ‘We recomply everything that goes on BritBox to modern viewing standards.’

The heart sinks.

Surely the whole point of subscribing to a service screening classic TV shows is that they don’t comply with modern viewing standards.

Most BBC and ITV drama these days drives me mad. Even those set in the past are obsessed with current concerns such as diversity and homophobia.

History is constantly being rewritten to satisfy the prejudices of today’s noisy, intolerant, self-appointed moral guardians.

The popularity of repeats channels such as Gold, Yesterday, Talking Pictures and ITV4 is precisely because they provide an escape from the ‘woke’ agenda of present day dramas.

One of the great joys of watching, say, Steptoe And Son, is spotting something that’s slipped under the censor’s radar and chuckling: ‘They’d never get away with that these days.’

Even so, some of the old shows are routinely preceded by warnings about possible offensive content. And I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched classic episodes of The Sweeney or Minder only to discover that some dialogue has been deleted and entire scenes have been edited out altogether.

I suppose that’s just about acceptable on free-to-air TV, or even

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN So that's why they call it a Trigger warning,