Re: the BBC – affectionately known by Brits as "Auntie"
> And there's yer [citation needed],
Well, in addition to the reference I gave in response to the first of your posts...
Let me just Google that for you...
How about this:
‘Auntie’ has been the jocular, and once derisive, nickname for the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) since the mid-1950s .The first known citation is believed to be a Leslie Illingworth cartoon, which appeared in The Daily Mail in 1953 welcoming the news of commercial television in competition with ‘Auntie’, namely the BBC.
That disagrees about the date of the first citation (please feel free to nip down to the British Library newspaper archive and check for yourself) but the date and content of the cartoon are in agreement with the other article's citation of Paul Holt, published in the Daily Herald (London, England) of Tuesday 18th November 1952: talking about the 1953 start of commercial television in contrast to the BBC "The film men have decided to bank all on the calculation that dear old Aunty BBC will continue to offer viewers those neat, nice little family dramas while they go out after bigger stuff."
The start of ITV was a Big Event in 1953 and a cartoon at the time would have a wider audience than the 1952 wordy article, so giving Leslie Illingworth credit for bringing the phrase into the wider usage is quite reasonable - even if he did not coin it, as I'm sure you are aware, Leslie Illingworth and his peers (as if!) were reknown for helping the public remember the occasional - appropriate - phrase.
The use of "Auntie Beeb" was very familiar in the 1960s as well, when BBC Radio became the "target", as its output, even on "The Light Programme", was being unfavourably compared to the Happening and Now overseas stations like Radio Luxembourg and the not-quite-UK-based pirate radio stations like Radio Caroline.
Of course, after that, the phrase was kept alive by "Cuddly Ken", Kenny Everett, and his wireless show - even whilst he was on Capital Radio, telling us how he got fired by the BBC for being flippant and pushing Auntie just a bit too far (although was what he was saying about politician's wives or the Musician's Union that made Auntie's lorgnettes fall?).
For the majority of the time, the BBC itself most certainly did NOT refer to itself as "Auntie"; your recollection of the show "Auntie's Bloomers" was from the 1990s, when the BBC was poking fun at itself and was ready to loosen up a bit. It didn't even refer to itself as "The Beeb" - this not even being acceptable on "Just A Minute" (although that may be because of the number of players who fell foul of the buzzer for repetition when reverting back to "B - B - C" after being caught out on the deviation of "Beeb"). Irreverant broadcasters such as Terry Wogan might use the abbreviation, but it wasn't used by any formal representative of the management and it was a genuine surprise to some when an official channel name formally recognised "The Beeb", in the form of CBeebies.
