That could have been the case. I'm just saying that I was talking to Ed and Margaret regularly at the time, and I don't remember either of them saying anything along those lines. Could this be a case of fannish speculation that somehow evolved into "conventional wisdom" over time?
Wasn't there another thing just in the past couple months that it turned out we had all been wrong about for ages? I feel like that was here in the Lit Forum. I've been having deja vu about this whole "thing that's been said repeatedly for years suddenly being shot down" progression.
Psst! Victoria Vetri probably didn't play Isis in "Assignment: Earth" even though every website in the world lists that rumor as a "fact" these days. And Kirk and Uhura did not have the first interracial kiss on television. (At least not without a lot of asterisks.)
Only if you define "interracial" as black-white. There had certainly been interracial kisses between white actors and Latino or part-Asian actors (e.g. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, or Robert Culp and France Nuyen in I Spy). Heck, even William Shatner had kissed nonwhite or mixed-ethnicity actresses before "Plato's" -- Pilar Seurat in a 1962 Naked City, BarBara Luna in "Mirror, Mirror" (she's part-Latin and part-Filipina), and arguably France Nuyen in "Elaan of Troyius" (shot earlier though aired later). Here's a nice overview of the issue: http://www.agonybooth.com/tvs-first-interracial-kiss-star-trek-27382
Or rather had never considered it that way. There was a whole to-do about it, people unsure if they would be accepted as a TV couple. So they traveled the US with a comedy routine - some of "The Audition" (Seal act) and "The Diet" (Cuban Pete/Sally Sweet number) were part of that.
Nope, to be honest, I knew very little other than there was a TV series called "I Love Lucy". It wasn't really repeated on British TV when I was growing up (in the 90s/00s) for me to come across, and it never appealed enough for me to seek it out.
I'm in the same boat, I've heard of it, but just in passing and more because of the interwebs and I've never watched it.
Ironic to see this converation on a Trek board -- since the success of I Love Lucy allowed its stars, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, to found their own production company called Desilu -- the company that eventually made Star Trek. This fandom and this forum would not exist if not for Lucy.
There's a reason the planet in the LEGACIES trilogy is named "Usilde." It's an anagram of Desilu, our way of tipping our hat to Lucy and Desi on the 50th anniversary.
It wasn't BBC2 it was Channel 4. Michael Grade loved it and so when he started Channel 4 it was one of the first thing he aired. I was 9 and loved it.