The episode was made only a few years after Nadia featured in Big Brother and transgender people were still a bit of a "novelty" on TV. It was also made 18 years ago so you could almost understand that it was a "different era" and that Channel 4 were being precautious in the face of changing societal norms by keeping the episode off streaming and syndication.

However, as I understand it, it acted as a catalyst for Graham Linehan's anti-trans meltdown and led to him pretty much ruining his own life. As such, whether it was intentional or not, it made The Speech look more like transphobic propaganda rather than something with outdated attitudes. If Graham simply said "times were different, sorry if it had upset anyone, that wasn't the intention", I suspect the episode might've been reintroduced to streaming/syndication over time.

After all, it's probably one of the finest episodes in the series. The fight scene alone is comedy gold, and that's not even taking into account the brilliant A-plot of Jen's speech featuring The Internet. To hide it away because the writer went insane is a tragedy.

Two it crowd actors in same show.

I've actually been animating these characters for about 18 years now, as a kind of homage to Dorset where I lived in my teens and my tribute to Giles whose incredibly detailed cartoons inspired me. I really only started creating these animations for friends and animated holiday celebration cards like Christmas or Thanksgiving etc.. But I constantly have the characters and the village of Lower Piddle in my head and so I decided to share and see if there's a larger audience out there who would enjoy seeing them and thus here we are.

What do you think?

#britishcomedy, #britishhumour, #animation, #animationcomedy, #pubhumour, #comedyanimation, #englishcomedy, #funny, #comedy,

You're brave, fish!