ICTJohnboy Posted July 6, 2020 Share Posted July 6, 2020 11 minutes ago, Wee Bully said: If you think that’s bad, look for Love Thy Neighbour on YouTube. It’s truly horrific, and shows what passed for entertainment on prime time 70’s TV. Alf Garnet was even worse. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hillonearth Posted July 6, 2020 Share Posted July 6, 2020 14 minutes ago, Wee Bully said: If you think that’s bad, look for Love Thy Neighbour on YouTube. It’s truly horrific, and shows what passed for entertainment on prime time 70’s TV. I remember a while back my missus asking me if I remembered Love Thy Neighbour after somebody had mentioned it at work - she's a fair bit younger than me and had never seen it. I fired up an episode on Youtube and she watched about ten minutes of it with her jaw hitting the floor that it had actually been allowed: "I take it they showed this really late at night?" "Nope. About 8pm on STV " It really WASN'T okay in the 70s... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cosmic Joe Posted July 6, 2020 Share Posted July 6, 2020 7 minutes ago, ICTJohnboy said: Alf Garnet was even worse. Alf Garnet's character was the racist idiot, rather like the Major on Fawlty Towers and the various Little Britain and Python characters. All very well however middle-class white folk lampooning racism in the name of satire, but I wonder what black folk made of it at the time? I expect most of them switched off... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bennett Posted July 6, 2020 Share Posted July 6, 2020 8 minutes ago, ICTJohnboy said: Alf Garnet was even worse. Till death do us part was mocking the society which existed in the 70s, Alf was the joke. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ICTJohnboy Posted July 6, 2020 Share Posted July 6, 2020 Interesting article here on Warren Mitchell, who was a brilliant actor : Quote Alf Garnett is an exception to this rule, in being world-class and unsurpassable at what he does – bigotry and bloviation. Alf was conceived by writer Johnny Speight as a panoramic parody of the most unpalatable attitudes to be found among some of the traditional white working-class in Britain at the time: loud-mouthedly anti-immigrant, anti-semitic, anti-socialist, sexist, philistine. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/nov/14/warren-mitchell-there-was-more-to-the-versatile-actor-than-cockney-foghorn-chairman-alf 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tamthebam Posted July 6, 2020 Share Posted July 6, 2020 12 hours ago, Hedgecutter said: If you’re white and speak English then you’re generally treated as one of us, especially those from the ROI I would say. In reality, the ROI is just as foreign as Poland, but it’s never, ever seen like that. If Americans spoke French as a first language then they’d be treated as the French are here. Probably worse actually. It's within living memory that folk coming from the Republic would see notices on flats to let "No Blacks or Irish". Not wanting to sound like a hard line member of the Green Brigade but there used to be a lot of anti-Irish prejudice in places outside of the usual "staunch" locations. I'm not sure what changed attitudes- maybe having people like Terry Wigan on TV and radio. The Republic's national team being managed by a 1966 veteran Jack Charlton and having, shall we say, a lot of 3rd generation Irish in the team helped too I suppose. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tamthebam Posted July 6, 2020 Share Posted July 6, 2020 I just noticed that predictive text has come up with a cracker of a pun there- Terry "Wig an" indeed! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pandarilla Posted July 6, 2020 Share Posted July 6, 2020 I remember a while back my missus asking me if I remembered Love Thy Neighbour after somebody had mentioned it at work - she's a fair bit younger than me and had never seen it. I fired up an episode on Youtube and she watched about ten minutes of it with her jaw hitting the floor that it had actually been allowed: "I take it they showed this really late at night?" "Nope. About 8pm on STV " It really WASN'T okay in the 70s...The ch4 show 'it was alright in the 60s/70s/80s' - at least i think it's called that - is very good at doing the same thing.Pulling together just how shocking some of the tv was, in terms of racism, sexism, homophobia, national stereotypes etc. How different stuff was, and how it was seen as the norm back then. It shows the clips, and the reactions of people who were involved, people who watched it as kids, and youngsters now. Some of the reactions are very interesting. Benny Hill obviously doesn't age well, and there's a clip of the goodies which is very racist, and bill oddie is a bit exasperated as he tries to justify it, whilst also acknowledging that it wasn't ok. There's also a Parkinson interview with a young helen mirren which is unbelievably sexist, and she handled him brilliantly. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sophia Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 6 hours ago, pandarilla said: The ch4 show 'it was alright in the 60s/70s/80s' - at least i think it's called that - is very good at doing the same thing. Pulling together just how shocking some of the tv was, in terms of racism, sexism, homophobia, national stereotypes etc. How different stuff was, and how it was seen as the norm back then. It shows the clips, and the reactions of people who were involved, people who watched it as kids, and youngsters now. Some of the reactions are very interesting. Benny Hill obviously doesn't age well, and there's a clip of the goodies which is very racist, and bill oddie is a bit exasperated as he tries to justify it, whilst also acknowledging that it wasn't ok. There's also a Parkinson interview with a young helen mirren which is unbelievably sexist, and she handled him brilliantly. Looking back, some of the double entendre was good though 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergeant Wilson Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 Love thy neighbour was a racist joke. Till death us do part was a joke about racism and class among other things. People seem to have lost the ability to tell the difference. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Waldo Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 Did Love thy Neighbour not at least tried to make Eddie, the white bigot, be the loser at the end of every episode? I've not seen it for ages mind. I always thought 'Mind you Language' was the worst. It was like a bigoted blunderbuss. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hillonearth Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, Sergeant Wilson said: Love thy neighbour was a racist joke. Till death us do part was a joke about racism and class among other things. People seem to have lost the ability to tell the difference. Alf Garnett - and indeed the likes of the Major in Fawlty Tpwers - were both in that vein of comedy where the humour is found in being invited to laugh at a grotesque character displaying extreme or outmoded viewpoints....the Major was a pathetic piece of the flotsam of empire seeing out his final days in a seedy hotel in Torquay, and Alf Garnett was a satire on the working class Tory attitude which still survives that no matter how shitty and tragic your life is, as long as you can maintain a self-perception that you are one step further up the ladder than The Other things are okay really. There was a distinct difference between that approach and the likes of Love Thy Neighbour and Mind Your Language which were badly-written racism for the sake of it, and as you say the nuance between the two appears to have been lost in the mix. Edited July 7, 2020 by Hillonearth 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GordonS Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 20 hours ago, Gordon EF said: Not sure if that was an old list but as of Jan 2020, only one of the top 10 is in Fife. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51279966 FWIW that's not wards, it's datazones, which are much smaller. The link I gave earlier is to wards. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GordonS Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 1 hour ago, Sergeant Wilson said: Love thy neighbour was a racist joke. Till death us do part was a joke about racism and class among other things. People seem to have lost the ability to tell the difference. They couldn't tell the difference right from the start. A helluva lot of people thought, and still think, what Alf Garnett says is true and many think the show was deliberately being racist but sneaked it past the PC lefties by pretending to be satire. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergeant Wilson Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 1 minute ago, GordonS said: They couldn't tell the difference right from the start. A helluva lot of people thought, and still think, what Alf Garnett says is true and many think the show was deliberately being racist but sneaked it past the PC lefties by pretending to be satire. That's the danger. Idiots will see it on it's most superficial level. Clever people who should know better will misrepresent it. Warren Mitchell explained his view of the character and I was always inclined to believe him. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coprolite Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 14 hours ago, throbber said: I see David Williams is coming under more fire on twitter because of his stereotyping in his books. ETA I have never read any of his books but people are still going crazy about the little Britain characters being harmful and offensive stereotypes. I always perceived the characters in Little Britain to just be absolute piss takes of themselves more than anything else but they did have characters who were disabled, black, gay and transgender so I can see why people would take offence if they were that way inclined. Does anyone on here think Lucas/Walliams are a pair of bigots who hate all minorities or was it all good harmless fun? There are certainly stereotypes in Walliams books. Raj (in just about every book) is a shopkeeper who is always trying to punt out of date sweets to kids with shite offers. (buy 24 get 1 free). There are a couple of books with loud and jolly fat carribean ladies. On the other hand, the main character in Slime has (illustrated at least) dark skin and this is never an issue. The sterotypes feel unnecessary and i'm a bit uncomfortable with them, but they are at least sympathetic characters. 11 hours ago, Bert Raccoon said: Was it though or was it just implying that specific character was pretending he needed to be in a wheelchair when he needn't be in one. I really don't think they were saying all disabled folk are at it. They did also have a mentally disabled woman who made seagull noises and was also faking it. I agree though that neither were making a wider point. However, given the red top narratives on benefit scroungers and the undeserving poor at the time it probably played to a certain mindset's prejudices. 9 hours ago, Angusfifer said: Alf Garnet's character was the racist idiot, rather like the Major on Fawlty Towers and the various Little Britain and Python characters. All very well however middle-class white folk lampooning racism in the name of satire, but I wonder what black folk made of it at the time? I expect most of them switched off... I saw an interview with Warren Mitchell where he appeared upset that racists didn't get the satire and used to congratulate him in the street for "sticking it to them". 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacksgranda Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 (edited) 16 hours ago, The Moonster said: I was told that the phrase "under the cosh" comes from slave ships too. If they wanted the slaves to work harder they would batter them with a big blunt thing and hence the work force would be "under the cosh". No idea if that's true but it sounds plausible. Plantations, surely? Can't imagine there was a lot of work for slaves to do on the slave ships - slopping out, maybe, scrubbing the decks? Can't see them using coshes on the plantation workforce on reflection - a cosh could do serious damage, crack a skull, break an arm - wheras a whip would "just" be sore. (Albeit could lead to serious infection of the wounds.) Edited July 7, 2020 by Jacksgranda sllepnig 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ICTJohnboy Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 Another quote from the Guardian article mentioned in previous post. Quote Mitchell was first bewildered – and then irritated – to discover that, for a section of the TV audience, Alf was seen as championing rather than satirising the political positions he stupidly espoused. Most spectacularly missing the joke was the morality campaigner Mrs Mary Whitehouse, who held up the potty-mouthed white supremacist as a prime example of the BBC’s moral depravity and attempted legal action to force it off air. Some would probably argue now that Mary Whitehouse was right to try and force Till Death Us Do Part off the air - even if she had missed the point of the show. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacksgranda Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 10 hours ago, Wee Bully said: If you think that’s bad, look for Love Thy Neighbour on YouTube. It’s truly horrific, and shows what passed for entertainment on prime time 70’s TV. It wasn't very funny back then, either. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacksgranda Posted July 7, 2020 Share Posted July 7, 2020 9 hours ago, tamthebam said: I just noticed that predictive text has come up with a cracker of a pun there- Terry "Wig an" indeed! I thought you'd done it on purpose - boooo! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.