Walters wheels out Mary Whitehouse for new TV show

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But now Julie Walters is bringing the clean-up campaigner back to life for a new BBC film – and the likeness is incredible.

Those making the 90-minute drama-documentary Filth say they want to show another side to the activist often portrayed by opponents as a humourless battleaxe.

Friends agreed Mrs Whitehouse, who died in 2001 aged 91, could be great fun, but fear her life might be embellished' for TV.

John Beyer, who took over from Mrs Whitehouse as director of the National Viewers and Listeners Association, now called Mediawatch UK, said: It's unfortunate they have tagged the story "Filth".

To the best of my recollection, that wasn't a word she used. Mary was not the poker-faced person that she was made out to be.

To suggest that she wasn't ever smiling just isn't true. I understand it is based on Mary's autobiography.

My anxiety is that it will be embellished. The fact that I was not consulted is also surprising, given I worked alongside her for 16 years.

Her family hasn't been involved either.'

Mrs Whitehouse began campaigning in 1964, when, as a secondary school sex education teacher, she became worried about the effect the new permissive society' was having on her pupils.

Her main target was Hugh Carleton Greene, the BBC's director general in the Sixties, who she called the devil incarnate'.

In return, he banned her from the air and commissioned a naked portrait of her with five breasts.

The BBC said: The fact a national treasure like Julie Walters is playing Mary shows it will be an affectionate portrayal.'

But Mrs Whitehouse may have taken issue with some of Ms Walters' previous roles.

In the 1995 Alan Bleasdale drama Jake's Progress, she filmed a controversial sex scene with Robert Lindsay.