LIVING WITH THE ENEMY

On the 4th November 1998, Cradle Of Filth featured in an episode of a BBC2 documentary series called "Living With The Enemy". It was a part of a rather disappointing series where they people were forced to live with their "enemies" for one week. Here is how the BBC website described the show in their online listings :

Documentary series in which people with opposing values, political convictions and cultural habits spend a week together. Cradle of Filth are a cult `black metal' band who specialise in death-mask make-up, loud music and ugly lyrics. Janet Robinson is a mother from Yorkshire whose teenage son idolises the group. In this programme, she spends a week on tour with Cradle of Filth.

Strangely, for a woman who was "so" upset by the band, Janet found out that Cradle of Filth weren't exactly what her rather shallow mind thought and realised that they are actually rather nice.

Here are a few quotes from the show :

JANET What's Heidi gonna say when she goes to school and the teacher says "What do you know about religious education?" to the class, "Do you know about Jesus?" and Heidi will probably pipe up "Oh yes, I know Jesus. He's a cunt". ROB If the child is that weak that we're gonna influence them enough to do something wrong then they don't deserve to be born to be quite honest. DANI The t-shirt "Jesus Is A Cunt", it's about adversity. It's a response to "Jesus Loves You" that we've had forced down our throats. LES What we're doing is rediculously inane. STUART If you're THAT fucking stupid that you take our word for something then you deserve EVERYTHING you get because we've made our own choices and we have our own opinions and we do not inflict them on others. JANET But you DO with these t-shirts. STUART Don't look at them then. Don't fucking look at them.

JANET With that one t-shirt, in particular, with the nun on the front masturbating and Jesus Is A "c" dash dash "t" on the back, would you make the same, you know, similar t-shirt, similar style again, as offensive. DANI Possibly but I probably think that... JANET Or do you think you're above that now? DANI No, no I don't. I'm not above anything. I'm just saying that I think that was the pinnacle of distaste. We couldn't hope to rival that. Y'know, if there was something as distasteful as that we could come up with, yeah, I'd imagine so. IRISH FAN Hello Ma, you whore of satan! NICHOLAS If it wasn't Luke's mum it could most probably easily be my mum or anybody's mum y'know. LES They don't like the t-shirts either. NICHOLAS Yeah, my mum don't like the t-shirts. LES She's gotta turn them inside out after she's washed them, to hang them on the line. JANET Yeah I can see some of the funny sides to it all now. I can laugh about it now. I might don a black wig, put some fangs in, y'know, and become theatrical. But, I still fear for Luke, when he goes to his gigs.