Careful lads and lasses. You can't say the word "pikey" now!! It's racist!!!

Basil Brush has become embroiled in a racism row over a scene featuring a gypsy woman selling heather and wooden pegs.

Puppet First Appeared In 1960s Police are investigating after a traveller reported an episode of the Basil Brush Show, broadcast on digital channel CBBC.

It showed a gypsy character trying to flog items to the children's puppet - best known for his "Boom Boom" catchphrase.

A spokesman for Northamptonshire police said: "We can confirm we have received a complaint about a TV show featuring Basil Brush from a member of the public in February.

"The complaint was logged as an incident of a racist nature."

Joseph Jones, vice-chairman of the Southern England Romany, Gypsy and Irish Traveller Network compared the programme to the Black and White Minstrel Show.

He told the Mail on Sunday: "This sort of thing happens quite regularly and we are fed up with making complaints about stereotypical comments about us in words that we find racist or offensive.

"Racist abuse of black people is quite rightly no longer deemed acceptable, but when a comedian makes a joke on TV about pikeys or gypos, there's no comeback."

Basil Brush still appears on an updated version of the morning TV show Saturday Swap Shop on BBC2.

The character first appeared in 1960s and was based on the upper-class comic Terry-Thomas.

The BBC refused to comment.

 

I think Marco Pierre White found that out on Hells Kitchen last year