[QUOTE=fable]It wasn't too long ago that merely mentioning the word "knicker" (underwear, panties) was enough to draw a laugh from a British audience. I've heard it in several 1960s-1970s British comedy shows, and back in the 1950s. I wonder if the reaction has to do in part with saying a word that's still culturally taboo? Though I hadn't thought four-letter words were taboo in England, any longer. They're certainly not in the US, and some friends assure me any Australian who doesn't use them regularly is eligible for deportation.[/QUOTE]
It is certainly true that British attitudes to what is acceptable language and what isn't have changed markedly in the last few decades.
I remember a documentary not so long ago on BBC3 which told of a British comedian (whose name escapes me presently) who was banned from television for telling a joke about fokkers, i.e. German WW2 planes. By contrast, the movie "Terminator 3" had at least one use of the f-word, and was rrated only "12" by the BBFC (approximately equivalent to the American PG-13 I think.
It is curious to note that despite Britain's moral stance on profanity and the like, it was deemed perfectly acceptable to have racial slurs in a program. The Fawlty Towers episode "The Germans" is a prime example of this, as there is a scene in which the Major is telling Basil how he once had to explain the difference between Indians and West Indians to his girlfriend using some very... colourful phrases (which I will not repeat). Similarly, there was a sitcom named "Till Death Do Us Part", which seemed to focus entirely on a racist, mysoginistic old codger whose new neighbours are a black family, and his hatred of them- from what I could gather there was no message of racial harmony as in the sequel series, "In Sickness and Health", the man was exactly the same, except that he had now developed a streak of homophobia as well.
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