BBC Guidelines: On Soaps & Stereotypes

The BBC Trust has just published its revised Editorial Guidelines.
Papers like the Mail are picking up on it post-Sachsgate because of a linep protecting people from "unduly intimidatory, humiliating, intrusive, aggressive or derogatory remarks for the purposes of entertainment."
"This does not mean preventing comedy or jokes about people in the public eye, but simply that such comments and their tone are proportionate to their target."
Wonder where this leaves the morbidly obese homophobic shitbag Chris Moyles?
Here's Section 5: Harm and Offence - Portrayal

5.4.38 We aim to reflect fully and fairly all of the United Kingdom's people and cultures in our services. Content may reflect the prejudice and disadvantage which exist in societies worldwide but we should not perpetuate it. In some instances, references to disability, age, sexual orientation, faith, race, etc. may be relevant to portrayal. However, we should avoid careless or offensive stereotypical assumptions and people should only be described in such terms when editorially justified.
5.4.39 When it is within audience expectations, we may feature a portrayal or stereotype that has been exaggerated for comic effect, but we must be aware that audiences may find casual or purposeless stereotypes to be offensive.

Fagburn thinks this is where programme makers can start tying themselves in knots.
To look at one of the most popular BBC programmes by way of illustration, much of the problem with the gay characters in Eastenders - from Colin and Barry, to Christian and Syed - has been that they seem to have been deliberately crafted not to be "stereotypically gay".
They are not camp, they are not queeny - which also means that they're not very... gay.
They're just blokes who fancy other blokes, "straight-acting straight-looking", "real men" "who just happen to be gay", ie they're rather dull and unconvincing and often somewhat unrecognisable.
Aaron the gay lad in ITV's Emmerdale is the latest variation on this tedious TV tradition.
Give me Coronation Street's stereotypical screamer Sean Tully any evening of the week.
It's an oft made complaint that there are too many gay nellies on telly; Graham Norton, Paul O'Grady, Alan Carr, Gok Wan and Louis Spence.
But none of these are fictional characters - they're like that because that's how they are.