Repair work on Bob Monkhouse’s old joke books, famously at the centre of a 1990s theft, was halted on BBC show The Repair Shop due to the discovery of inappropriate gags, The Independent has learnt.
In the BBC show, specialists help to fix personal items and heirlooms brought in by members of the public. But when the late comedian’s handwritten quips, dating back to the 1960s, arrived in the barn, they were considered too offensive by the show’s production team and the segment was scrapped midway through filming.
It was reported by The Sun that the item was being repaired as part of a Monkhouse tribute episode, but it’s understood this is not the case, and the segment was merely scrapped from an ordinary instalment of the show.
Joanna Ball, managing director of Ricochet, who produces The Repair Shop, said: “We planned to fix the joke book, but when we got it to the barn and saw it in its entirety, we realised it contained many jokes that were not appropriate for a programme.
“We explained this to the family and returned the book to them.”
The joke books, in which Monkhouse had allegedly hand-drawn cartoons of topless women, were brought in by Colin Edmonds, who was gifted them in the comedian’s will. Monkhouse died on 29 December 2003, aged 75, and had been suffering from prostate cancer for more than two years.
The Sun reports that Edmonds previously described the journals as being “of their time”, stating: “There are things that were acceptable in the Seventies which one wouldn’t dream of saying today.”
These were the same notebooks that went missing from a BBC locker in 1995. Monkhouse offered a £10,000 reward for their return, and they were eventually found two years later.
Ricochet said that the show’s production team and the BBC were in agreement about not including the item. It added that “making decisions on which items to repair and include in the programme is part of the normal production process” and that “these decisions are based on a range of factors”.
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Monkhouse was renowned for his endless store of quick-fire jokes. Originally a radio comedy writer, the performer went on to become a mainstay of popular primetime television light entertainment beginning with Candid Camera in the 1960s and continuing to the National Lottery.
He also hosted The Golden Shot, Celebrity Squares, Family Fortunes, Bob’s Full House and Bob Says Opportunity Knocks.
Some of Monkhouse’s past material has been subject to trigger warnings. In January 2026, ITVX added a disclaimer to an episode of An Audience with Bob Monkhouse from 1994, informing viewers that it contained “classic adult British humour” that reflects “attitudes of its time”.
