Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Ever condemned to be the butt of crude humour, or clad in the garb of awful euphemisms, at last the lavatory comes out of the closet. This documentary film reveals everything you ever wanted to know about them - where and how they are made, who invented them, and how the primitive privy was elevated to an art form.

In a pilgrimage through Britain's loveliest lavatories, Lucinda Lambton celebrates the centenary year of the water closet, at long last paying the debt of gratitude to Britain's plumbing pioneers and sanitary magnificoes. Through her eyes the humble symbol of relief to the discomfited becomes an object of beauty and a delight to the eye.


Clip taken from Forty Minutes: On The Throne, originally broadcast on BBC Two, 24 November, 1984.




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