Joel Morris

Should vintage comedy be judged by today’s standards?

David Stubbs takes exception to racist jokes in Fawlty Towers – but comedy depends on the assumptions of the time, and precognition is no use

Basil Fawlty and Major Gowen in the Fawlty Towers episode ‘Communication Problems’. [Getty Images] 
issue 22 July 2023
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  • Different Times: A History of British Comedy

    David Stubbs

    Faber, pp. 416, £20

The British sense of humour is a source of power, soft and otherwise. The anthropologist Kate Fox observed that our national motto should be ‘Oh, come off it’, and a patriotic raised eyebrow has been cited as our chief defence against demagogues. We see ourselves through a comic lens, a nation of Delboys and Mainwarings, Brents and Leadbetters, Gavins and Staceys.

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