They say one man's meat is another man's poison, never has this been more true than this week. It has been a week of controversy for Hobo-Bonobo. In the same league of Watergate, Sachsgate or indeed, Cow and Gate. This has been big.
When we started Hobo-Bonobo in 2004, there were only 3 things on it (you may argue that is still the case, but that is neither here nor there) A faux competition section, in which the main prize was to win Tony Robinson's genitals, an advert for pretend monkey cigarettes and, "A Look Into".
Those of you familiar with "A Look into" will know that it is either myself, or a contributor talking about a particular subject in the guise of a famous person. Such famous entrants have been Sean Connery talking about Dinosaurs, J.K. Rowling talking about World War 2 and Michael Crichton talking about the Loch Ness Monster. It was after a while that we realised that there may be a slight chance that people would think that these pretend entries may actually be real. That danger started to become a reality when real fans of the stars were leaving questions as comments on the entries. We decided to leave a large disclaimer on the website that "Nothing written on this site is intended to be true or factual, and none of the celebrities named in the 'Look Into' section have anything to do with this website. Their 'contributions' are entirely fictional and have been created by the authors of Hobo-Bonobo. The opinions expressed on Hobo-Bonobo.co.uk are not those of anyone, particularly not the people to whom they have been accredited."
Out of all the distinguished guests entries we have had in the "A look into" section, the one that garnered the most attention, was certainly a surprise. About two years ago a friend of mine submitted a fairly innocent entry. "A look into Tortoises with Molly Sugden." Without a doubt, this entry got the most attention, with almost weekly questions posted by Molly fans. I decided, rightly or wrongly, to answer some of these questions as Molly Sugden, or at least a character of Molly Sugden within the Hobo-Bonobo world. I like to think that whilst most comments left can sometimes seem offensive on the Hobo-Bonobo website, it is all meant with only the intention to amuse, ourselves or other people. What I will admit is that the comments page on the Molly Sugden article, did get out of control, and possibly mildly offensive. Particularly with her sad death recently, but, like with most things in life, we forgot to do anything about it. That is, until the day of controversy.
Saturday morning, I was sitting in my spare room on my PC playing championship manager whilst the wonderful sounds of the restored Doors album "The Soft Parade" were wonderfully seeping out of my speakers. My wife came into the room and told me to check my emails. I did so and in my inbox, there it was, amongst the adverts for Viagra and Tesco, there it was, an email from the official Molly Sugden website, asking us to either remove or moderate the Molly Sugden content as it was causing offence. Not only that, but that David Croft (one of the writers of "Are you being served") was also offended, which struck me as quite interesting considering one of the main jokes of Are You Being Served revolved around a woman talking about her cat but implying she was talking about her vagina. Or vice versa, I forget.
Anyway, whilst many of you might think, "hell, I don't want to bow to the man, I would have been a rebel and kept it up". We didn't think that at all, for a few reasons. Firstly, it was a very nice and polite email, secondly, they were spot on, some of the comments that were left were pretty offensive and in light of her death, pretty horrible and thiurdly, it was dangerous, if you put "Molly Sugden" into Google, our pretend "A look into" came out on top. Which would explain why so many people came by and left serious comments.
So, we removed it. It is no more. If you want to know what Molly Sugden thought about Tortoises, you will just have to use your imagination.
It does make me think though, just how many other celebrities we have offended with our tripe.
I can only suspect that offending a dead person is still noting to be proud of.
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| Comments about This Article |
| Hey, I've got the rights on posthumously contributing to this website....
Comment By: Ceri Seel, 25 Aug 2009, Rating: 5/5  |
| Great site - thanks for the plug
Comment By: Molly Sugden, 25 Aug 2009, Rating: 5/5 |
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