Black Nancy upsets posters shock

The news that Sophie Okonedo is to play the first black Nancy in the BBC's new production of Oliver Twist has set the keyboards on fire in some houses. Rarely has the casting of an actress as a fictional character been greeted with more cries of 'BBC PC bias' 'Loony BBC pander to the chattering classes' and other excitable language than this.

Of course Dickens doesn't say that Nancy is black, you could argue that he doesn't say she isn't - although the fact that he did write a scene where Nancy disguises herself as Oliver Twists sister without raising so much as a single line about third parties questioning the ethnicity of Oliver Twist himself that you have to assume that Oliver is indeed white and ergo, his sister is by all probability white.

Of course the first line of attack is always, 'of course there weren't any blacks in Dickens London' - which is so ridiculous as to not warrant further reference. The second line of attack is the one most favoured by the anti-BBC lobby and that is the cry of PC gone mad. Well yes and no. The writer of this adaptation also writes for EastEnders and I've no doubt that she has approached the subject from a modern viewpoint, after all how could she view it from any other, and has therefore decided that she wanted a black leading role. Let's be honest she'd have to go a long way to find a more talented black actress than Sophie Okonedo who brings class to every role she plays. Of course there were blacks in London at the time Dickens wrote this, a fact that one of the greatest British film directors ever acknowledged back in the 1940's - you see I do my research as well as writing this rubbish. David Lean no less included black actors in supporting roles and as extras in both Great Expectations and Oliver Twist which, if my memory serves me right, were made in the 1946 and 1948. I don't remember David Lean being hauled over the coals for that.

Besides which this all seems little more than another excuse for some BBC bashing. We are talking about a fictional character after all and I don't remember too many letters of complaint to POV when Russell Davies's Fanny Hill included what Caitlin Moran in the Times memorably described as a 'double dyke f****ring' in the opening episode.

As a postscript I actually did some research into the demographics of Rotherhithe during the 19th century at around the time that Dickens would have written Oliver Twist. Fagin's lair was set in Rotherhithe, just along from Shad Thames if you are ever in the area. The population of that area was, and I quote, "mainly blacks, Jews, French and Chinese with whites in the minority." I conclude that Dickens, like Shakespeare three hundred years before him, was writing for those who could write i.e the white middle and upper classes. The working class were very much the underclass most of whom weren't even in full time education until after the Education Act of 1870.