Barry Cryer

[Ben@Forest]

Lets face it, if you are more than 50 you have been priveliged to have lived through a golden age of comedy. I think we started entering the dark ages with the pathetic bunch of foul mouthed stand ups that began appearing more recently. The super sensitive 'woke' brigade is further damaging our ability to poke fun at ourselves.

Alternative comedy, at least as a term, started in the 1980s, so that's hardly recent and there was plenty of 'foul mouthed' comedy before that, just not on TV.

In Hamlet, when he is jesting with Ophelia about having his head in her lap he says 'Do you think I meant country matters?' Definitely intended to provoke a loud guffaw from the Jacobean audience.

[Hellhound]

Lets face it, if you are more than 50 you have been priveliged to have lived through a golden age of comedy. I think we started entering the dark ages with the pathetic bunch of foul mouthed stand ups that began appearing more recently. The super sensitive 'woke' brigade is further damaging our ability to poke fun at ourselves.
Exit stage left....
Al

Define 'foul mouthed'.
I'm mid-50s and find 99% of the 'safe' TV comedy of the 60s/70s mind-numbingly unfunny.

[pwa]

Lets face it, if you are more than 50 you have been priveliged to have lived through a golden age of comedy. I think we started entering the dark ages with the pathetic bunch of foul mouthed stand ups that began appearing more recently. The super sensitive 'woke' brigade is further damaging our ability to poke fun at ourselves.
Exit stage left....
Al

Define 'foul mouthed'.
I'm mid-50s and find 99% of the 'safe' TV comedy of the 60s/70s mind-numbingly unfunny.

There was funny and unfunny back then, and there is the same now. And if anybody heard Barry Cryer talking about current affairs, he wasn't some insensitive old bloke stuck in the 1970s and unable to appreciate that the world had moved on. He had moved with it. He was also capable of the odd "foul word", but he reserved that for audiences who were relaxed about it. As I do.

[sjs]

I'm mid-50s and find 99% of the 'safe' TV comedy of the 60s/70s mind-numbingly unfunny.

And most of the rest was just offensive, certainly in today's terms and probably then too,

[al_yrpal]

What comedy you like, what music you like, what food you like, what style of home decoration you like, what booze you like is often determined by what you got used to in your yoof and early adulthood. Perhaps thats the answer?
However Delboy remains eternally popular
In my travels around the world, on hearing I am from England, I have often been greeted with a big grin and "thats where Benny Hill comes from!". Wokeness isnt universal (yet!)

Al

[DevonDamo]

What comedy you like, what music you like, what food you like, what style of home decoration you like, what booze you like is often determined by what you got used to in your yoof and early adulthood. Perhaps thats the answer?
However Delboy remains eternally popular
In my travels around the world, on hearing I am from England, I have often been greeted with a big grin and "thats where Benny Hill comes from!". Wokeness isnt universal (yet!)

Al

The problem with throwing around the term 'woke' is that it's an undefined catch-all, which is a favourite of the alt-right, most of whom are no-holds-barred racists and use it as a way to appeal for support without actually having to defend their racism etc. There's definitely a debate to be had about free speech being stifled in mainstream media, but by using a loaded term like 'woke' then you inevitably provoke strong suspicions that you're racist/homophobic/whatever. Suggestion: rather than derail this thread about Barry Cryer's passing, why not start another thread about the content you considered to be the lost, golden years of British comedy (I'm guessing 'Mind your language,' Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson etc?) and ask for peoples views.

[Ben@Forest]

Humour can be interpreted different ways within a generation, let alone across generations. After Father Ted started being shown (1995) there were complaints it was anti-Catholic and at least mocking the Irish, although both writers of the show are Irish.

By 2002, taking that date because it was when the Boston Globe published its reports about widespread Catholic clergy child abuse, there were UK complaints about Father Ted repeats because it took (fictional) issues or behaviour about Catholic clergy too lightly and humorously in light of the child abuse scandal. Of course Father Ted had nothing like that in any storyline, but it was enough for some people to take offence.

[reohn2]

What comedy you like, what music you like, what food you like, what style of home decoration you like, what booze you like is often determined by what you got used to in your yoof and early adulthood. Perhaps thats the answer?
However Delboy remains eternally popular

I generally agree with that.

In my travels around the world, on hearing I am from England, I have often been greeted with a big grin and "thats where Benny Hill comes from!

Benny Hill is naughty unsophisticated slapstick comedy which is generally accepted as that but it's very dated.

". Wokeness isnt universal (yet!)

Al

How do you define 'wokeness' and do you think it is a bad thing,if so why?

EDIT;The Cambridge dictionary definition:- https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... h/wokeness

[reohn2]

There was funny and unfunny back then, and there is the same now. And if anybody heard Barry Cryer talking about current affairs, he wasn't some insensitive old bloke stuck in the 1970s and unable to appreciate that the world had moved on. He had moved with it. He was also capable of the odd "foul word", but he reserved that for audiences who were relaxed about it. As I do.

Agreed,Barry Cryer was a master of the art of comedy,a very clever man indeed and as you say upto the minute and in no way stuck in the past.

[reohn2]

What comedy you like, what music you like, what food you like, what style of home decoration you like, what booze you like is often determined by what you got used to in your yoof and early adulthood. Perhaps thats the answer?
However Delboy remains eternally popular
In my travels around the world, on hearing I am from England, I have often been greeted with a big grin and "thats where Benny Hill comes from!". Wokeness isnt universal (yet!)

Al

The problem with throwing around the term 'woke' is that it's an undefined catch-all, which is a favourite of the alt-right, most of whom are no-holds-barred racists and use it as a way to appeal for support without actually having to defend their racism etc. There's definitely a debate to be had about free speech being stifled in mainstream media, but by using a loaded term like 'woke' then you inevitably provoke strong suspicions that you're racist/homophobic/whatever. Suggestion: rather than derail this thread about Barry Cryer's passing, why not start another thread about the content you considered to be the lost, golden years of British comedy (I'm guessing 'Mind your language,' Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson etc?) and ask for peoples views.

Spot on!

[Mick F]

Benny Hill.
Garden of Love.
Benny at his best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxAHYqHf5Is