The X certificate was introduced by the British Board of Film Censors in 1951, following the recommendations of the Wheare Committee report. It replaced and extended the remit of the H certificate, which largely covered horror films.
The wording on the actual certificate was as follows:
This film has been passed for exhibition to persons over the age of sixteen.
It was widely seen as a necessary development to reflect the fact that many film-makers were tackling more adult-oriented themes in ways that made it difficult or impossible to cut their work to make it suitable for the A certificate.
BBFC Secretary John Trevelyan later admitted that two mistakes had been made in defining the X certificate - the minimum age for admission should have been eighteen, and it should have had a different name, as the 'X' tag was too suggestive, not least because it rhymed with "sex".
The first of these perceived errors was corrected on 1 July 1970, when the old X certificate was effectively split into two: the X certificate age limit was raised to eighteen, and a new AA certificate was created, aimed specifically at teenagers of fourteen and upwards.
Trevelyan believed that raising the X certificate age limit would give him much more freedom to pass the vast majority of films without requesting cuts - indeed, he said that he would personally prefer not to cut X certificate films at all, unless they specifically contravened the criminal law. However, this coincided with a widespread increase in the number of films featuring strong sexual and violent material that the BBFC considered unsuitable even for adults, so although fewer films were banned outright, a significant number were still cut.
The X certificate was abolished on 1 November 1982, the BBFC finally answering Trevelyan's second criticism by replacing it with the much more neutrally-named 18 certificate.
Michael Brooke
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