Ed Richards: Parting view of Ofcom chief... we hate jokes on the disabled

Swearing, once a primary concern for television regulators and campaigners such as Mary Whitehouse, is of little concern to the modern viewer, the retiring head of Ofcom believes.

Ed Richards, who stands down at the end of this month, said one of the changes he has noticed during more than eight years in charge of the communications watchdog was that vulgarities no longer upset the viewing public – provided they are not delivered in a threatening manner.

“They are more tolerant of light swearing, non-aggressive swearing, particularly in a comedy situation,” he said.

But a new taboo had emerged – one that comedian Frankie Boyle had identified and tried to break. Mr Richards cited Boyle’s joke about Katie Price’s disabled son Harvey in a routine on Channel 4 as a key example of the public’s intolerance of jokes made at the expense of people with disabilities.

Ofcom upheld 500 complaints about Boyle’s 2011 routine, saying the jokes – sanctioned by Channel 4 chief executive David Abraham – appeared to “target and mock the mental and physical disabilities” of the boy.

In an interview with The Independent, Mr Richards said: “Probably 20 years ago… making a joke about a child with a disability would have gone uncommented on, or not commented on as much as it has been. I think people were offended by that because it was making fun of a child’s disability and people don’t want to hear that any more.”

He said the trend was part of a wider backlash against all forms of discriminatory content on television, something that was borne out by audience research conducted by Ofcom. As a result, some programmes from a previous generation of television could no longer be shown, he said.

“[There are] comedies from the Seventies which had certain racial stereotypes in them which are unimaginable today and if they were shown people would find them offensive and that wouldn’t just be people from black and ethnic minority communities, it would be everybody. I think the country has moved on in a very important way there.”

In some ways it’s a surprise that Mr Richards can bow out of Ofcom on his own terms. Before becoming Prime Minister, David Cameron said: “With a Conservative government, Ofcom as we know it will cease to exist”.

The watchdog was derided as a “New Labour quango” and right-wing critics pointed to Mr Richards’s past career as a policy adviser to Tony Blair and a former BBC strategist.

Former BBC Director-General Greg Dyke didn’t help his cause by branding him a “jumped up Millbank oik”.

Despite having to regulate some highly controversial issues, such as the failed News Corp takeover of BSkyB and the sharing out of valuable spectrum required by telecoms providers and broadcasters, Mr Richards hands Ofcom to his successor Sharon White with its future assured. “I think we have held a steady nerve in the face of some of the most controversial and difficult questions in and around the media and regulation that you could imagine,” he said.

Some of the attacks on Mr Richards have been highly personal, notably in the Daily Mail after Ofcom pointed out that most of the complaints over suggestive dance routines by Rihanna and Christina Aguilera on the final of ITV’s X Factor in 2010 were generated by raunchy coverage on the paper’s website. “It is clear that the photographs that were published in the newspaper were significantly more graphic and close-up than the material broadcast in the programme,” said Ofcom, as it ruled that ITV was not in breach of its code.

The paper launched a series of personal attacks on him, some designed to torpedo his bid to become Director General of the BBC in 2012. We will never know if he would have handled the Jimmy Savile scandal better than ill-fated BBC Director-General George Entwistle but Richards said he learned to cope with the press hatchet jobs.

“The key thing to remember about those sorts of things is that you are not the first to be subjected to that sort of vilification and you won’t be the last,” he said.

Ofcom’s tough stance on the BSkyB issue helped make its reputation. When the Milly Dowler hacking story broke “everything changed”, said Mr Richards, and as News Corp abandoned its takeover bid politicians changed their view of the regulator.

“Prior to the phone-hacking revelations we were regarded as a bit inconvenient,” said Mr Richards. “I would be stopped by various MPs and others whose views, because of the phone hacking revelations, had completely changed. They would say to me: ‘Thank God Ofcom stood up for what they thought was right, and it was absolutely right that your report [said] there were issues which should be referred.’ I can tell you some of those people weren’t saying that before the phone-hacking revelations.”

Mr Richards spent four years at Ofcom trying to set up a digital public service publisher to fill gaps in local news provision. It never came about but recent changes in local news were “positive”, he claimed, citing hyper-local websites and a revived ITV. He admitted that he was “worried” that regional newspaper companies were still facing “serious challenges”.

He said: “The debate at a national level is all about devolution to Scotland and to other parts of the UK, and to cities or town halls. We have got to be mindful of the fact that if you are transferring power from the centre to other points around the country we need to be confident that the media can play its central role to subject that power to effective scrutiny.”

Mr Richards, whose partner Delyth Evans is standing for Labour in Carmarthen West at the General Election, hasn’t decided what to do next.

Asked if he will return to the BBC, he vigorously shakes his head. “I’ve certainly got no ambitions in that direction.” After effectively saving Ofcom, he will undoubtedly have other opportunities.