The Black and White Minstrel Show was a British light entertainment show that ran on BBC television from 1958 to 1978 and was a popular stage show. Thorne raised the issue again in 1967 with Oliver Whitley, Chief Assistant to the BBC's director general, Sir Hugh Greene. The BBC says that the Black and White Minstrels is "a traditional show enjoyed by millions for what it offers in good-hearted family entertainment".

We very believe in this project and we also believe that the Pet Therapy should be accessible free of charge. Tucked away in another part of the BBC’s written archives is an earlier memo from Barrie Thorne – one he sent five years before. Adam’s reply came back accusing Thorne of “arrant nonsense”: the show, Adam argued, belonged to that “perfectly honourable theatrical tradition of the British music hall”.

Subsequent efforts by the BBC to introduce the Mitchell Minstrels without blackface in two variety programmes failed, while blacking up and the Minstrels persisted on British screens well beyond 1967. Thorne’s 1962 memo had gone on to suggest that “If black faces are to be shown, for heaven’s sake let coloured artists be employed and with dignity”.

Evidence of minstrelsy and blackface can be located across film and television in 20th century Britain. It is a great record sort of like the original jive bunny with crooners and the trad black singers in wing tip shoes. Among the various activities that we have planned for the biennium 2017/18, there is the Pet Therapy, for children and people with disabilities, but also for adults or older people who want to find an inner balance. It developed into a regular 45-minute show on Saturday evening prime-time television in a sing-along format, with both solo and minstrel pieces (often with extended segueing), some country and western numbers, and music derived from other foreign folk cultures.In 2023 the BBC broadcast a documentary presented by the actor David Harewood and the historian David Olusoga about the pernicious influence of blackface minstrelsy in pervading racial stereotypes and anti-black racism in Great Britain. But the fact that it was being said at all was at least some measure of the BBC’s belated, faltering progress in understanding the implications of a multicultural Britain – a full three decades after the arrival of Windrush. This continued every year until 1989, when a final tour of three Butlins resorts ( Minehead, Bognor Regis, and Barry Island) saw the last official Black and White Minstrel Show staged. The BBC Television Toppers were loaned for one day by the BBC under contract and appear in the film The Dam Busters (1955) in the spotlight theatre dancing scene. Though any development in the performance of such acts may have ended before the First World War, the "old-time" minstrel theme remained a consistently popular form of entertainment in the UK well into the 1950s.

The Corporation’s Chief Accountant, Barrie Thorne – who, significantly, had spent some time in the BBC’s New York office and so had seen something of the Civil Rights movement – argued vociferously for the show to be pulled from the schedule. Regardless of country of origin all tracks are sung in English, unless otherwise stated in our description.

No doubt you have read the press comment and you will be very welcome, if you wish to see but have not seen, to borrow from the Secretary or H.