Shock! Former British Prime Minister photograped with now Dead Dictator

Think back, to the year 2009, before the Arab Spring, before Cleggmania and the ConDems, before Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife, Sherlock and before Avatar proved that 3D cinema was never going to catch on properly. It's not really that long ago, fewer than four years in fact, but it already feels like a lifetime. An awful lot has happened since and the world is a very different place. iPads were a thing of the future and the Liberal Democrats were still floating in relative political insignificance, with only a dedicated few aware that they even existed.Think back, I wonder if you remember this picture:

                                     
It was taken when the man convicted of blowing up Pam Am Flight 103 (also known as the Lockerbie Bombing)  Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, had been released back to Libya as he'd been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had been allowed to return to his country of birth to die (something which didn't happen until May 2012, but that's another matter). At the point when this happened, the struggling Labour Government managed to infuriate many people by deeming that a man should have the right to return to his homeland. Still though, that's not really the crux of what I'm getting at here.

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the deaths of thousands of Libyan's in a bitter civil war and the eventual mass-participation in snuff movie production when Gaddafi was finally killed. How does this photo look? It didn't look brilliant at the time it was taken and there were people even then questioning the morality of Our Glorious Leader shaking hands with a known dictator.

In all honesty though, when one looks back through history there are many occasions which, with hindsight, now look rather different. You may, or may not be aware of the hideous nature of Joseph Stalin, the mass murder and poverty which he inflicted upon his own people and the fact that he was photographed numerous times with Winston Churchill. This defining image of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, meeting during the Second World War is arguably seen very differently now, to then:

                                   
Why then, was there such mass hysteria when an episode of young children's program transmitted an episode in which a character imitated Jimmy Savile presenting Top of the Pops was broadcast early on Sunday morning. The episode in question had been made in 2001, long before Savile's crimes were discussed openly. The false outrage was almost laughable, yes, Savile was a strange man and there have been revelations about how he abused his privileged position. That doesn't make a show which makes only mild reference to Savile, a reference which only adults would understand, in a context for which he was very well known, offensive.

It might seem a little tasteless to some, and perhaps it's better now that the episode has been permanently removed circulation because of the associations which Savile's unique presenting style has with far darker actions. 

What we shouldn't have to do though, is apologise for history. At the time the program was made no one shouted in outrage, and no one really has the right to do so now either. The episode wasn't 'hidden away' and it's core audience won't have any idea of who Savile was and they'll probably only see him as a figure of history. 

Anyone intrigued by the slurry of recent Savile-related outrage from certain morally questionable tabloids might be interested in this article. I hate giving them hits, but it's worth remembering that it's not only the BBC who need to check their archives.