Until the Daily Mail finds a way to prove that the BBC actually gives you cancer, the paper has to rely on its faithful friend ‘outrage’ in order to further its attacks on Auntie. This festive season it was the public’s apparent shock at the semi-nudity shown in the Christmas return of Sherlock Holmes, a program that most other newspapers thought was brilliant.

The Daily Mail: Sherlock and the case of nudity before 9pm.

Far from mentioning anything like the level of enjoyment that led The Independent to describe it as “shockingly good TV”, or for it to occupy almost all of the trending topics on Twitter during it’s run-time, the Mail reacts to nothing but the (non-frontal) nudity in the programme of Sherlock’s new love interest Irene Adler. The paper then publishes screen-grabs of the shocking nudity, just to make sure its readership know exactly what they are referring to.

Also of brilliant hypocritical note is that Twitter trends are not mentioned, yet individual tweets are quoted as some measure of the public’s reaction. This despite the service being regularly dismissed by their ‘Top Scientists’ as a frivolous toy by which #brokenbritain can only find out what Steven Fry had for breakfast.

I saw recently that the paper has a corrections department, through which they can quietly apologise when Christmas hasn’t been cancelled in some schools, or when the EU doesn’t ban bendy bananas etc. So, assuming the publication of the images alongside details of how dangerously shocking they were to be some kind of mistake, I sent them this email:

Hello,

I think there is inaccuracy in your article about the BBC’s Sherlock nudity scenes. You claim the scene was outrageous for being shown pre-watershed, but someone seems to have accidentally posted full screen grabs onto your website! Also, on further inspection I found at least half a dozen more images in the right hand side of the ‘outrageous’ story that appear to be content from your site showing semi-naked celebrities!

I was pretty disgusted to hear that the Sherlock scenes went out pre-9pm. Could you please explain what prevention you’re making to insure that none of your semi-pornographic images are seen before that time too? I assume you’re currently working on some kind of paywall, or at least a log-in to prevent innocent readers from seeing such shocking nudity, such is your mission to rid Great Britain of such filth.

Please could you let me know whether you decided to:
a – Correct the use of ‘outrage’ with the more honest ‘enjoyed looking at pictures of naked women under the guise of being outraged so as to maintain one’s perceived moral backbone whilst actually being wholly naturally aroused’.
b – Stop taking scandalous paparazzi shots of celebrities on beaches and promoting them constantly around your site.
c – Build a paywall for your site.

Thanks!

They responded with this:

Thank you for your letter. We would not necessarily agree that the images on our website are, as you claim, ‘semi-pornographic’. We are forwarding your letter and remarks about a paywall to our website editor. In the meantime, if you were, as you say, ‘pretty disgusted’ to learn that the Sherlock scenes were screened before 9pm, perhaps you should address your comments to the BBC.

Happy New Year.

Touché. We appear to have reached a disingenuous stalemate.