Did anyone see the 1971 comedy Father Dear Father the other night?

It involved two teenage daughters who seemingly have their old dad wrapped around their dainty little fingers. However towards the end of the film a very telling scene arouse. The younger daughter of I think seventeen, had pretended to run away from home but was in fact in one of the many rooms of their oversized house, the girl on the phone to her father is discovered to be playing him for a fool, still on the phone the girl realising that her cover has been blown and in fact her father is right behind her says with a worried look on her face 'I suppose you're thinking I'm not too big to have my bottom smacked aren't you?'

Does this little tit bit of seventies, middle class, suburban life depict the fact that the idea of a 17 yr old girl having her bottom smacked by daddy wasn't unheard of back then or was it just mild 70's titillation? If it was the latter then it was of a very weird and inappropriate kind even for the time I would have though?

Any ideas?

It was simply titillation and typical of films of the time. There was a whole series (Confessions of …) which went further and had people simulating sex on screen. And why not?

The only mainstream film of the seventies I know of that had actual spankings in it was The Ups and Downs of a Handyman (1975). What ever happened to the actress Olivia Syson who gets spanked in the shower? This was the only film she appeared in.

Girls did get 'smacked bottoms' at home back then, probably not that much compared to boys but it happened. I remember my best friend's sister getting spanked by their step dad, we must have been twelve or thirteen and she was a couple of years older! We went outside, beneath her window to hear it better, my friend found it extreamy amussing, I on the other hand am ashamed to say, found it extreamly something else!!

Keep dreaming, Roger.

You think I made that up? I honestly didn't that is a god's honest truth event which actually happened!

No idea how I can prove it to you though, but it really is the truth!

Why do you find it so hard to believe?

I thought the younger daughter looked about 25, but then Patrick Cargill as their father was pushing it, even in the black n white TV series-more like Grandfather!

Whilst we are on 70's comedies, did anyone shake their head in disbelief as one micro-skirted dolly after another fell into the arms of that Renaissance Man Reg Varney in On The Buses? Still, at least he didn't finish up in Last of The Summer Wine like poor old Blakey!

Or wonder how many times the cast of Please Sir had flunked their CSE's to be in Fenn Street classrooms at age 31!!

And can anyone remember that God-awful one series thing where Sid James & I think John Bluthall retire to a country hotel or something-can't remember the title, but its' DVD release a year or so back was greeted with"The only programme written(yes, it was!) for TV that has the effect of making On the Buses appear to be the scriptwork of Feodor Dostievsky"