Ruth Langsford and Coleen Nolan have addressed the continuing ‘censorship’ controversy surrounding Roald Dahl, questioning the necessity to ‘wrap young people in cotton wool’ as well as the new choice of words.
The current versions of the author’s enduringly famous children’s stories have been modified to remove potentially harmful material, with portions in works such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda relating to weight, mental health, gender, and race being amended or eliminated.
On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak blasted the proposal, saying, ‘When it comes to our very rich literary heritage the Prime Minister agrees with the BFG that you should not gobblefunk around with words.’
‘Gobblefunk’ is a term from Roald Dahl’s novel The BFG that means to toy with words in order to develop new ones or meanings.
Puffin Books, a part of Penguin Random House, engaged sensitivity readers to sift portions of Dahl’s back-catalogue to guarantee they can ‘can continue to be appreciated by everybody today’.
Among the hundreds of modifications, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Augustus Gloop is now ‘enormous’ rather than ‘fat’ and the Mrs Twit of The Twits is no longer ‘ugly’ – but rather ‘beastly’.
During Tuesday’s episode of Loose Women, Coleen objected to the changes, saying, ‘They’re changing the term fat to huge – yeah, ’cause that’s much better!’
With Ruth heard agreeing, she continued: ‘You’re not ugly, you’re beastly! Oh, thank you for not saying I’m fat and ugly.’
Ruth added: ‘We are just starting to wrap up our young people in so much cotton wool that they’re going to be frightened of their own shadows soon, you have to allow them to make up their own minds about something’
‘But to start editing and pulling things out from such a great author, who’s so adored by children all over the globe, I believe is wrong and I think it’s dangerous,’ she said, adding that she had ‘no problem’ with a written language warning at the start of the book so you have a choice.
‘I think it will lead on to they’ll be scared to go out of the house soon in case something offends them.’
The Roald Dahl Story Company, which handles the copyrights and trademarks for the writer, stressed that ‘it’s not unusual to review the language’ during a new print run.
‘Our guiding principle throughout has been to maintain the storylines, characters, and the irreverence and sharp-edged spirit of the original text,’ the company added in a statement.
‘Any changes made have been small and carefully considered.’
Latest editions of Dahl’s books now also come with a notice from the publisher in the copyright page which reads: ‘The wonderful words of Roald Dahl can transport you to different worlds and introduce you to the most marvellous characters.
‘This book was written many years ago, and so we regularly review the language to ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today.’
Other authors have slammed the move, with Salman Rushdie stating on Twitter that Dahl was ‘no angel’ but that ‘Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed’ by the ‘absurd censorship’.
Likewise, His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman stated on BBC Radio 4’s Today show that Dahl’s works should be ‘faded away’.
‘If Dahl offends us, let him go out of print,’ he said.
Dahl, who died in 1990, had a history of scathing remarks and made no secret of his antisemitism, telling The New Stateman in 1983 that ‘even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason’.
Meanwhile, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Oompa Loompas were originally depicted as African pygmies with warlike cries, leading to the civil rights group NAACP launching a protest when film adaptation plans were announced in 1971, saying Dahl’s depiction of the factory workers was racist and ‘reinforced slavery’.
The Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company apologised for the author’s tumultuous background in a buried statement on Dahl’s website, which was discovered in 2020.
‘Those prejudiced remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Roald Dahl’s stories,’ the statement read.
‘We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words.’
Loose Women airs weekdays at 12:30pm on ITV1.