Round the Horne was actually an extremely progressive show for it’s time,
from the wiki…
<i>Round the Horne</i> played an important role in establishing gay culture within the public consciousness.<sup id=”cite_ref-5″ class=”reference”>[5]</sup> Julian and Sandy and their use of the gay slang polari gave the country a sympathetic weekly portrayal of non-threatening openly gay characters, many of whose catchphrases passed into everyday usage. A good example of this is the adjective “naff” to denote bad or shoddy, even used by the Princess Royal (as a verb) in a clash with the press some years later. They were able to get away with innuendo that would have been unheard of a mere ten years before — in one episode, Sandy refers to Julian and his skill at the piano as: “a miracle of dexterity at the cottage upright“; innocuous in itself, unless one knows that a ‘cottage’ was the polari term for a public toilet where men met for anonymous sexual encounters and ‘upright’ referred to an erection.<sup id=”cite_ref-6″ class=”reference”>[6]</sup>
This at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in the UK
