Black to the Seventies

It's Friday and I can't think of anything to post.  I'm sure I had something lined up for today.  In fact I know I did.  But can I remember what it was?  Obviously not, or I'd be posting it.  Clearly, today's outbreak of sunshine and my subsequent day trip to 'the country' in order to enjoy it has befuddled my memory.  Either that, or I'm still in shock from the realisation earlier this week that my childhood now lies forty years in the past.  Actually, that whole business set me off on a lengthy wallow in seventies nostalgia, courtesy of You Tube.  I enjoyed every variation on the Man About the House opening titles I could find, not to mention those for George and Mildred, not to mention a couple of classic episodes of Doctor in the House (from 1969), plus a selection of seventies TV adverts.  I even found some footage of Hughie Green sliming his way through Opportunity Knocks, (and I mean that most sincerely).  However, the wheels all came off when I made the mistake of trying to watch an episode of Love Thy Neighbour.

Perhaps it isn't as bad as I recall, I thought.  But five minutes in, I was finding it hugely offensive.  I know that people, (by which I mean racists), always try to defend 'race' comedies like this on the grounds that 'it was the seventies, attitudes were different', but even by the unenlightened standards of 1972,  Love Thy Neighbour is deeply, deeply offensive.  The fact that the main black character gets to call the white racist protagonist 'snowflake', 'honky' and 'paleface' in no way mitigates the latter character's constant use of the term 'nig nog' to describe, not just black people, but anybody non-white.  There is no equivalence between the terms.  The stream of racial epithets spewing from Jack Smethurst's mouth - all of which the studio audience laugh at uproariously - is as depressing as it is offensive.  As for the other defence of the programme made by apologists - that the black character usually ends up on top, with his bigoted neighbour generally getting his comeuppance - is also a non-starter.  Despite 'getting his comeuppance' in most episodes, the white character, 'Bill', is nonetheless portrayed as some kind of 'loveable rogue' everyman character, who the audience is clearly being invited to identify with.  The writer Bill Bryson once characterised the series as My Neighbour's a Darkie - I think he nailed it.

Well, there you have it - looks like I've managed to post something after all.