Tom and Jerry

What’s wrong with that picture? Logically, just about everything — the mouse is talking, the cat is dicing vegetables and is terrified, despite his kitchen knife being much bigger than Jerry’s spear… and anyway, a cannibal mouse would eat mice, not cats. It’s perfect nonsense.

Even if you’re a Tom And Jerry fan, you might not have seen that cannibal scene. It’s from a 1951, seven-minute cartoon called His Mouse Friday, where the duo get shipwrecked on a desert island, like Robinson Crusoe. It is never shown on TV now, for fear of causing racial offence.

The problem isn’t so much Jerry’s deep-fried accent, or that when the real cannibals show up, they’re talking hep Fifties jive, like jazz stars Duke Ellington and Sammy Davis Jr. No, the problem is the soot.

Jerry rubs his face and body with soot from the cauldron to disguise himself. He blacks up.