Captain Pugwash is a persistent urban legend, repeated by the now defunct UK newspaper the "Sunday Correspondent", that ascribes sexually suggestive names – such as Master Bates, Seaman Staines, and Roger (meaning "have sex with") the Cabin Boy – to "Captain Pugwash"'s characters, and indicating that the captain's name was a slang Australian term for oral sex. The origin of this myth is likely due to student rag mags from the 1970s. John Ryan successfully sued both the "Sunday Correspondent" and "The Guardian" newspapers in 1991 for printing this legend as fact. In May 2017, a live-action film adaptation was announced, directed
Michael Bates (actor) and St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Bates served in Burma as a Major with the Brigade of Gurkhas before his discharge at the end of the Second World War. In 1953, while an ensemble member with the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, Bates appeared in "Richard III" and "All's Well That Ends Well". Bates appeared in "Hotel Paradiso", which starred Alec Guinness, in 1956 at the Winter Garden Theatre in London. On the radio, he played a variety of characters in the BBC's long-running comedy series "The Navy Lark", including Able Seaman Ginger, Lieutenant Bates, Rear Admiral Ironbridge, the Padre,