Far be it from me to add to the BBC’s current woes, but the controversial edit of President Trump’s speech is as nothing compared to what the BBC did to the Isle of Man 60 years ago this week.

On Sunday, November 28 1965 BBC Television screened a documentary entitled ‘The Other Island’ which was, in fact, a carefully edited hatchet job on the Isle of Man.

Filmed during the summer of 1965 its broadcast caused outrage across the island. Every aspect of the commentary and the editing of the interviews was designed to denigrate and make fun.

Opening with shots of beautiful glens and rolling countryside, the commentary quotes Shakespeare’s Tempest announcing that ‘the Isle is full of sounds, noises and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not’.

But that was just to lull the viewer into a false sense of security because there then follows a startling sequence of TT riders crashing into walls and being flung off their bikes, intercut with people pulling the handles of one-armed bandits in the Casino.

From then on there is unremitting criticism of every aspect of the island.

Filmed during the busiest weeks of our tourist season we see hordes of visitors arriving off the early boats and being made to sit on the promenade because the landladies won’t let them into the boarding houses. The younger visitors are interviewed and complain about the fact that meals are at set times, the coach trips are inflexible and ‘if you’re not off the streets by 12 o’clock you’re for a severe belt wi’ a big stick’.

The selective statistics that are quoted give the worst possible picture of the island. A declining economy, a failing tourist industry, an ageing population, a vanishing fishing industry and endless difficulties with setting up a business in the island are all hammered home. Interviews with local politicians such as Clifford Irving, Jack Nivison and Harold Colebourn are carefully slanted to highlight problems rather than present anything positive.

We see a fish auction in Peel and then hear that the fishing industry has all but collapsed - ‘there’s no boats, no men, no fish!’ says one ‘old salt’.

The newly opened casino is also presented as a disaster for the Manx people.

There was certainly opposition to it at the time and local MHK Ed ‘The Red’ Callister is seen standing in front of the Castle Mona telling us that ‘this building, once the home of the Lords of Man has been prostituted to the popular craze of gambling’. He tells us that we have, in the island ‘the most irresponsible Government it has ever had’.

Although the casino manager is allowed to speak positively about the place Harold Colebourn MHK then weighs in about the iniquities of the Manx people enjoying an occasional flutter. He tells us that they ‘have gone gambling mad’ and they’re spending more money than they can afford. Tradesmen’s debts are mounting up, houses aren’t being repaired and he would favour legislation to stop locals entering the Casino at all.

The commentary then tells us that the Island has failed to attract new businesses to the island. Apparently a recent survey of 15 firms that moved to the island showed that eight of them would never have come if they knew then what they know now.

To illustrate this we hear from a Mr Potter who came from Jersey to set up a pottery business (really?) and who declares that ‘sometimes I wish we hadn’t started it’.

We see elderly people coming out of Kirk Michael church after a Sunday service and learn that the island has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe and has a growing number of old people.

There is one old aged pensioner for every three workers. ‘However,’ the commentary tells us ‘it’s not just the old that die’ as we watch a funeral procession going along Glencrutchery Road intercut with TT bikes. We are told of a national newspaper report that claimed ‘visitors came to the island hoping for blood’ and that since the start of the TT and MGP, 71 riders have been killed.

But there’s more. A visitor is lined up to laugh at the ‘superstitious’ nature of the Manx, and how she had to say ‘Hello’ to the Fairies. ‘How daft can you get?’ she asks.

We are then treated to the ‘eccentricity’ of some of the island’s celebrated animals, such as cats with no tails and sheep with four horns which leads on to one of the most extraordinary sequences of the whole film.

Claiming that the island needs a magician to solve its problems, it manages to find one in Gerald Gardner who had died the year before but whose legacy lived on at the Witches Mill in Castletown where his museum of witchcraft had flourished for more than 20 years.

We then see a meeting of the coven. The sequence starts with a shot of the stark naked participants, their buttocks towards the camera which, given it was 1965, could well have been the first time such a thing had ever been seen on British television and was perhaps not what the Manx public were expecting to see on TV on a Sunday.

High priestess Monique Wilson is seen holding a dagger and performing an incantation as naked men and women dance round her to the throbbing music of Carmina Burana, kindly dubbed in by the BBC for added atmosphere.

The whole sorry affair is rounded off by a young Manx journalist, Terry Cringle, telling us the story of the Manx crab and revealing that ‘the Manx are a strange people’ and that if a Manxman does well on the island ‘he will probably find that his personal popularity decreases as his personal possessions, such as a Rolls, a mansion or a mistress, increase’.

The broadcast caused outrage across the island. The newspapers declared it ‘A Shocking Exhibition’ and a ‘death blow’. It was raised in Tynwald and official complaints were made to the BBC with the Governor, Sir Ronald Garvey, personally writing to the director general of the corporation, Sir Hugh Greene.

It was to no effect. The response was to assure His Excellency that the film was the work of ‘an experienced director’ and that there was no possibility of a further film to present a different view.

Of course the island had problems and challenges, but then so do most countries if you seek them out and highlight them, and so the question is why did the BBC decide to focus on all the negatives, abandoning any idea of balanced reporting and present the Isle of Man in the worst possible light?

Well, I have uploaded the video to my You Tube channel for everyone to see, and I have added a short postscript at the end summarising the island’s response to the programme and offering my personal thoughts as to why the BBC decided to portray the island in the way they did.

You can follow this link to see the programme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fksE3m8SnWE or simply open You Tube and search for ‘CharlesGuardVideos’.