Northampton police have confirmed that they are investigating Basil Brush, following a complaint about alleged racism received in February. The incident involved a sketch in which a gypsy character tried to sell the much-loved puppet some wooden pegs and lucky heather.
"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,” said Joseph Jones, vice-chairman of the Southern England Romany, Gypsy and Irish Traveller Network, comparing the children’s favourite to the Black and White Minstrel Show.
The wily, upper-class glove puppet was unrepentant, however and denied that the sketch defamed gypsies.
“Who else comes up to you selling sprigs of heather and pegs? An outreach worker from the garden centre?” he asked reporters.
“Boom, boom!” he added, before throwing his head back and laughing himself to silence.
When he recovered, Mr Brush said that, as a talking fox, he was himself a member of an endangered species and an ethnic minority - and after coming back from extinction once already, he was damned if some thieving bunch of pikeys was going to shut him up. At this point the police lost their patience and set their dogs on him. They then arrested themselves for breaching the foxhunting ban, but found there was no evidence that they were guilty of anything other than a breach of Health and Safety procedures and let themselves off with a caution, saying that “Lessons have been learned.”
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