Sherlock Holmes Doesn't Smoke Anymore

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You're quite right about Holmes 'piss-takes' being a graveyard. I had an argument with a friend of mine about this. She's the audience the BBC loves: mid-thirties; an eternal student where taste is concerned; Xfm all day long; stand-up comedians are the legislators of her moral and political world; a 'pacifist' and 'socialist' who loves money and power and refuses to argue her political stance, because that's 'boring';thinks the Foo Fighters are 'rock and roll' (as opposed to being thrashy, tinny white 'rock', like the odious John Cougar Mellencamp played on a higher speed); thinks Dr Who, far from being a children's programme of highly variable quality, is actually the greatest entertainment known to man and Russell T Davies and the actor who plays the Doctor are Shakespeare and Garrick respectively; regards the whole day-glo, noisy, specious, flippant, vainglorious, boring, hypocritical, upspeaking, trashy, 'postmodern' vista of television as her Arcadia and her theological handbook of instruction; her divine trinity is Bill Hicks, Kurt Cobain and Jonathan Ross - with a little bit of Robbie Williams on the side, for those weepy, chocolate scoffing moments.
So we're sitting there half-cut and I mention the stuff about the new BBC Holmes and she says, 'well, that's a good way of updating him. I just think that him having smoking patches is a good way of updating him.'
I said, 'he's been cleaned up for the Blairite age, where tobacco is banned but other street drugs are negotiable and marijuana a naughty treat for kids. He is, in fact, the Labour Party's Sherlock Holmes by dint of his having been worked over by television people and television people are all Luxury Socialists ie the Labour Party of today. Look at that pompous northern cunt who played him before the present one, his press conference was all 'my Dr Who is about meeting aliens and not thinking they're terrible just because they're aliens.' (get the - mid-Atlantic academic's accent - subtext there, John?)
But, when people having been weaned on telly and its values, anything outside of that thinking is shocking to them, like in the Isaac Asimov novel where the planet is a roofed-in, airbrushed ut(dyst)opia where kids have never seen the sky and when they are taken up and shown it they go insane. Never turn the telly off, kids, reality will send you insane.
Funny thing about it is that people such as her were ALWAYS pointing out 'ruling class' propaganda 20 years ago but now their ruling class is doing the Goebbels they fail to see it. I've even heard it said that the BBC was and is 'right-wing', though any consideration of its drama output of the last 45 years will show a marked Loachian aspect.

Ah well, the left will rediscover moral indignation when Cameron takes over the Blairite project next year. Have you heard about this Jack Straw quote, 'the English as a race are not worth saving'? I want to use it but cannot find the source.