in 1956 (although his drunken slurring was not understood); an anonymous man who painted the railings on Stranmillis Embankment alongside the River Lagan in Belfast, who in 1959 told Ulster TV's magazine show, Roundabout, that his job was "fucking boring"; and the actress Miriam Margolyes, who claims to have used the word in frustration whilst appearing on University Challenge in 1963. Johnson later called Tynan's use of the word "his masterpiece of calculated self-publicity", adding "for a time it made him the most notorious man in the country". Private Eye joked that Tynan's stammer made it the first three-syllable four-letter word on British television. In response to public outcry, the BBC was forced to issue a formal apology. In the House of Commons, four censuring motions were signed by a total of 133 Labour and Conservative backbenchers. Mary Whitehouse, a frequent critic of the BBC over issues of "morals and decency", wrote a letter to the Queen, suggesting that Tynan should be reprimanded by having "his bottom spanked". The irony of Whitehouse's comment has been noted, given the later revelations of Tynan's fetish for flagellation. The controversy was part of a larger, longstanding aim of Tynan's "of breaking down linguistic inhibitions on the stage and in print. In 1960, "after much manoeuvring", Tynan got the four-letter word into The Observer in an article about the Lady Chatterley trial. His organisation of Oh! Calcutta! in 1969 was another important victory in that campaign. Tynan was fiercely against censorship and was determined to break taboos that he considered arbitrary. Tynan's left-wing politics and lifestyle made him something of a poster boy for 1960s radical chic and champagne socialism in London. He suffered a serious personal defeat in the National's internal battles over his support for the Rolf Hochhuth play Soldiers, a controversial work highly critical of Winston Churchill, whose National Theatre production was eventually cancelled. Later career An erotic revue which Tynan co-ordinated and partially wrote, called Oh! Calcutta!, debuted in 1969 and became one of the most successful theatre hits of all time. It included scenes written by various authors, including Samuel Beckett, Sam Shepard, John Lennon and Edna O'Brien, as well as music and featured frequent nudity. Tynan was a poor businessman, however, and the contracts he signed for the show brought him in only $250,000 out of the many millions it earned. A sequel devised by Tynan, Carte Blanche