The idea that sitcoms allow us to "laugh at the bigot" is still a defence used today, with similar if admittedly less gratuitous results. Yet people are still defending and praising them, Cleese and Milligan still held as the forefathers of British comedy – all because they claim they were laughing at, not with, the racists. Under the guise of political satire, they spent decades recirculating racial slurs and making heroes of bigots. British comedy in the 1960s and 1970s had an unseemly obsession with people of colour. There's It Ain't Half Hot Mum, the wartime comedy set in India and Burma the 1968 released feature-film Carry on Up the Khyber even firm family favourite Fawlty Towers got involved with a joke about "niggers and wogs". After six episodes it was pulled off the air by the Independent Television Authority. It remains one of the most embarrassing chapters of British television, made all the worse by its creators' misguided claim they were doing good. Yet Curry and Chips lacked even the pretence of social commentary.
Interestingly, Milligan's co-writer on the series was Johnny Speight of Til Death Us Do Part, back at it again with his "actually this is satire" line. Despite purporting to be a parody of racist attitudes, the show – basically a vehicle for Milligan's dodgy accent – appealed to the very bigots it set out to skewer. Watching it back now, the show exists in a strange hinterland between a studio sitcom and bleak kitchen-sink drama – the ugly prejudices of its central character are matched by the rotting wallpaper and stale period furniture. Spending every episode spouting vitriol about "wogs" and extolling the glories of Empire, the show's creator Johnny Speight always claimed his character was a satirical swipe at white, working-class bigotry. Till Death Us Do Part first aired on BBC1 in 1965, introducing the UK population to Alf Garnett – a sort of nightmarish proto- Daily Express reader in round glasses, and the godfather of the on-screen slur. Our questionable history of racist sitcoms are more than the embarrassing echo of distant history – they are a reminder of the stories we tell ourselves about our history, and of just how recently the British population thought the term "nig-nog" was pretty funny, actually. Old anxieties about our once-great nation resurfaced, proving "political correctness" to be little more than a dodgy paint-job over Britain's deep-seated ethnic self-importance. In recent years, they've matured into a sort of quaint artefact to be scoffed at by a more enlightened generation – popping up on Oh My God Can You Believe It Was the 70s Once-type shows, where former Loaded editors and stand-up comedians giggle incredulously at clips, while Barry Cryer blinks slowly and assures us "it was a different time."īut if we've learnt anything from the spiritual exhumation of Brexit, it's just how much prejudices we thought we had buried are in fact alive and well. Put simply, for every "fork handles", there's a sketch like Spike Milligan's " Pakistani Daleks".īritain's history of racist sitcoms is not much of a secret. Sadly, however, as with pretty much everything we celebrate about our collective history, the reality of our comedic heritage is more problematic than we often care to remember.