Mull of Kintyre test

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Kintyre is highlighted in red. The "Mull of Kintyre" properly refers to the promontory at the southernmost end, but in this context the apparent angle of the whole peninsula is the relevant standard against which a penis would be compared.

The Mull of Kintyre rule is an unofficial guideline used by publishers in the United Kingdom to decide whether an image of a man's penis can be shown. According to Professor John Hoyles of the University of Hull, the guideline was adopted by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) in 1992. Hoyles presented it as "the male performer's penis must never appear more than slightly tumescent". The Scottish lawyer Richard Findlay had previously alluded to it in a 1999 interview with Annette McCann.

The BBFC would not permit the general release of a film or video if it depicted a phallus erect to the point that the angle it made from the vertical was larger than that of the Mull of Kintyre, Argyll and Bute, on maps of Scotland. This test was subsequently adopted by UK television broadcasters and by some print publishers. By 2002 the BBFC had largely abandoned its restrictions on the depiction of tumescent penes. The rule is thought to have first been broken on UK television by a 2003 Channel 4 series entitled Under the Knife with Miss Evans.