Whilst channel surfing t’other day, I happened across an episode of Butterflies on… BBC3, I think it was.

I’d not seen this programme since it’s original airing back in 1978 so, despite having missed half of the show, I sat and revelled in its somewhat dated humour.

In one particular scene, Ria – the main protagonist of the show, played by the wonderful Wendy Craig – was moaning to herself about the state of her humdrum life, as she was doing the housework.  She complained about how bored she was, doing the same thing, day in, day out. And then she indulged herself in several flights of fancy:

“I want to run naked through Harrods, shouting Woolworths!’”

“… and I want to run barefooted and knickerless through fields of buttercups”.

That sort of thing.

And then she shouted something that shocked me – and I don’t shock easily when it comes to watching telly. She shouted, “I want to be raped!”, before falling down onto the sofa with a harumph.

Of course, she didn’t mean what she said: she was obviously making the point that her romantic life was just as boring as the rest of it. And we the viewers didn’t believe there was any truth to it either, because her frustration – sexual or otherwise – was quite evident.

But say it, she did.

A line that assuages, almost, what is widely considered to be one of the most abhorrent acts that can be committed against a woman.

“Well, she was literally asking for it”.

I can’t imagine any actress saying such a thing today, even though TV is far more sexually permissive and promiscuous nowadays, compared to what it was forty-odd years ago.

And I’m surprised that the Beeb – so nanny-ish in the seventies and early eighties – even allowed such a line to be said.  They’d have had Mary Whitehouse all over them, surely?

I wondered whether, because the line was also written by a woman – Carla Lane (Liver Birds, Bread, etc) – does that make it more acceptable?

No, I don’t think it does.