50s/60s Britain and Now

[iL Dottore]

Punch!
Now that brings back memories. I used to read it quite avidly between about 1965 to about 1974. The thing about Punch was that it was so terribly, terribly uneven. The various columns by Alan Coren were nearly always funny, although much of the material published then would get the author lynched by the twitterati mob of today (such as the columns “written by” the late Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin). I found the cartoons equally uneven, although Bill Tidy always managed to raise a smile, if not a laugh (and I never saw the point of, or the humour in, Gerald Scarfe’s cartoons).

Although an ephemeral, topical and transient magazine, Punch like Private Eye has contributed a number of very useful phrases to the English language (at least to those of a certain age and, quite possibly, of a certain strata of society). Two that come to mind are: “if you know of a better ‘ole, go to it“ and “the Curate’s egg“, the first coming from a cartoon series written and published in World War I about to British soldiers in the trenches and the second from Victorian times as part of a long caption for an otherwise unfunny cartoon. I’m sure there are others.

I mentioned Private Eye, which did get started in the middle of the 60s, but I’m afraid I really didn’t get “into“ Private Eye until the 80s. Nonetheless, Private Eye has done much to enrich my vocabulary. “Tired and emotional“, “Ugandan discussions“, “continued on p94” and “Shurely shome mishtake” have all been used by me at one time or another.

Finally, wasn’t it Private Eye that came up with the nicknames of “Madge“ and “Brenda“ for, respectively, Madonna and the Queen?

 

[Reorte]

44 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Although an ephemeral, topical and transient magazine, Punch like Private Eye has contributed a number of very useful phrases to the English language (at least to those of a certain age and, quite possibly, of a certain strata of society). Two that come to mind are: “if you know of a better ‘ole, go to it“ and “the Curate’s egg“, the first coming from a cartoon series written and published in World War I about to British soldiers in the trenches and the second from Victorian times as part of a long caption for an otherwise unfunny cartoon.

 

Always did find "the curate's egg" to be a rather strange phrase but never thought about where it came from.

 

I guess the humour from it very much depends upon being part of the society of the day and its attitudes.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Reorte

[iL Dottore]

2 hours ago, Reorte said:

Always did find "the curate's egg" to be a rather strange phrase but never thought about where it came from....

The original cartoon, although by our standards it was a detailed line drawing rather than a proper cartoon, showed a nervous young curate having tea with his Bishop, the Curate is making a face as though he had bitten into something objectionable. The dialogue, at great length in quite a few lines below the picture, went something along the lines of this:

Bishop: my dear fellow did you get a bad egg?

Curate (not wanting to offend): no my Lord, I assure you parts of it are excellent,

So a “Curates Egg” is something that isn’t all bad but (at least as understand it) is more “bad” than “good”

Edited June 12, 2020 by iL Dottore

[Hroth]

18 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Readers Digest is still alive and  well, I find. Somehow this doesn’t particularly surprise me; it has great experience of its market and knows what they want. 

 

I was going to tag that "informative", but decided that it wasn't "useful" unless in the sense that it helped avoid it!  I'd come to the conclusion that it had folded as I hadn't come across it or ads for it for more than a decade.

 

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

The thing about Punch was that it was so terribly, terribly uneven. The various columns by Alan Coren were nearly always funny, although much of the material published then would get the author lynched by the twitterati mob of today (such as the columns “written by” the late Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin). I found the cartoons equally uneven, although Bill Tidy always managed to raise a smile, if not a laugh (and I never saw the point of, or the humour in, Gerald Scarfe’s cartoons).

 

Most humorous writing of then wouldn't do for now, which is sad as the corridor of acceptability is narrowing day by day.  I always saw Gerald Scarfe as a "poor mans" Ralph Steadman....

 

I've got a copy of the Punch Cartoon Album (150 years of variable cartoons) which has the merit of not containing many of the boring stories that the pictures accompanied.  A railway one that has always amused me is of the station porter classifying a tortoise as an insect for purposes of carriage....

 

Edited June 12, 2020 by Hroth

[rockershovel]

“Cartoon” was originally used to denote a pencil, chalk or similar preliminary study, by an artist, often as part of the planning of a completed work. The sense of “simplified humorous caricature” is a much later usage. 

 

Tenniel’s cartoons for Punch are often clearly executed portraits of public figures; “Dropping The Pilot” is a case in point. 

 

I hadn’t thought of Scarfe as a “poor man’s Steadman” but I take your point. I didn’t know that Steadman was a friend and collaborator of Hunter S Thompson, although it doesn’t much surprise me. 

[fezza]

My favourite railway punch cartoon was the one of the two precocious public schoolboys going on their annual holiday by train and calling "Thallatta! Thallatta!" on their first sight of the sea. 

 

It just shows how well educated many Victorian readers were - how many readers of Private Eye today know their Xenophon and would get the joke? 

Edited June 12, 2020 by fezza

[Welchester]

Alan Coren.

 

Forgive me if this story is out of period, but Coren used to play hoaxes on various bodies and write them up in his column.

 

When I worked for UCCA in the student holidays in the 1980s, there was a spoof university application that was handed around. It was supposedly from a fairly hopeless public school type called Poxsby-Grynge. Although submitted as a genuine application it was rumbled because of the applicant's nonexistent postcode. However, the real giveaway was the personal reference from A. Coren, 'Poxsby-Grynge is different!'

[The Johnster]

I never 'got' Punch.  The humour, if it can be classed as such, was somewhat Vogon in character, and ponderous in a way that made a Beames 0-8-4 look nimble.  The cartoon were often exquisite, little works of art in themselves, but failed to make whatever obscure and usually irrelevant point they were supposed to.  The Telephone Directory was more interesting and had better ads.  Private Eye was my organ, and I frequently stroked and carressed it fondly, and late Viz, but both seemed to go off the boil affer a while., as if they'd become accepted by the chattering classes and thus become part of the Establishment. 

 

Maybe it was really me getting older, less tolerant, and more cynical; I'm not qualtifed to say.  Seeing Hislop described somewhere as a 'National Treasure' put the kybosh on it.  Perhaps I've become a bit 'Establishment' myself; quick, where's my wrist slashing knife...

3 hours ago, fezza said:

My favourite railway punch cartoon was the one of the two precocious public schoolboys going on their annual holiday by train and calling "Thallatta! Thallatta!" on their first sight of the sea. 

 

It just shows how well educated many Victorian readers were - how many readers of Private Eye today know their Xenophon and would get the joke? 

If a Victorian readier had been educated at all, he'd have most likely gone to a public school and had the 'Classics' rammed down his throat (or perhaps somewhere else if what we are told about boarding schools is true).

[Welchester]

4 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

If a Victorian readier had been educated at all, he'd have most likely gone to a public school and had the 'Classics' rammed down his throat (or perhaps somewhere else if what we are told about boarding schools is true).

 

The classic example was Harrow in 1859.

[rockershovel]

That was classic Punch humour, though. 1066 And All That first appeared there, as did the works of C Northcote Parkinson and A P Herbert. 

 

It seemed to lose its way in the early 1960s, though. The old guard were passing from the stage, and the new talent was going elsewhere; by the time I became aware of it, in about 1968 it had no discernible theme and seemed to be coasting along on its past 

[Nearholmer]

Didn't a lot of Rowland Emmett's cartoons, and possibly Heath-Robinson's, appear in Punch? Emmett particularly caught a moment of post-war nostalgia turned whimsy that seems to have characterised the 1950s, so perhaps they managed to bottle the zeitgeist for a particular class (pre-war grammar and third-tier public school?) for just a few years.

 

 

 

Edited June 12, 2020 by Nearholmer

[The Johnster]

2 hours ago, Bishop of Welchester said:

 

The classic example was Harrow in 1859.

Ah, the benefits of a classical education; make a man of you, lad...

 

Llandaff Cathedral may have had a covert culture of this sort of thing; certainly a Llandaff bishop was caught being grossly indecent (of course I have no idea what this phrase means or can be referring to) in a gentleman's lavatory in the centre of Cardiff in 1975, and found it appropriate to resign his post.

[Welchester]

56 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Ah, the benefits of a classical education; make a man of you, lad...

 

Llandaff Cathedral may have had a covert culture of this sort of thing; certainly a Llandaff bishop was caught being grossly indecent (of course I have no idea what this phrase means or can be referring to) in a gentleman's lavatory in the centre of Cardiff in 1975, and found it appropriate to resign his post.

 

I think there was a big clean up after 1975. When I went to the theological college in 1983 there was no trace of it.

[Hroth]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Didn't a lot of Rowland Emmett's cartoons, and possibly Heath-Robinson's, appear in Punch? Emmett particularly caught a moment of post-war nostalgia turned whimsy that seems to have characterised the 1950s, so perhaps they managed to bottle the zeitgeist for a particular class (pre-war grammar and third-tier public school?) for just a few years.

 

 

 

I think both appeared in Punch

 

Heath-Robinson was WW1 and pre-WW2 (he died in 1944) , Rowland Emmett was post war.  Both had a fair amount of railway interest, HR with the GWR* and RE with more ethereal fantasy railways that resulted in the Far Tottering and Oyster Perch railway at the Festival of Britain.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Heath_Robinson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Tottering_and_Oyster_Creek_Branch_Railway

 

* Railway Ribaldry was produced for the GWR 100th in 1935 and depicted fanciful scenes of the early years.

[St Enodoc]

9 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The Telephone Directory was more interesting and had better ads.

I always found that had too many characters and not enough plot.

[rockershovel]

11 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Didn't a lot of Rowland Emmett's cartoons, and possibly Heath-Robinson's, appear in Punch? Emmett particularly caught a moment of post-war nostalgia turned whimsy that seems to have characterised the 1950s, so perhaps they managed to bottle the zeitgeist for a particular class (pre-war grammar and third-tier public school?) for just a few years.

 

 

 

 

It was a bleak time for people like that, I think. The NCB and BR achieved great strides in modernisation and training, but it was done by recruiting 16-year-olds into industry-specific training schemes. Power generation and transmission was a similar case. 

 

The “brain drain” of the 50s and 60s was their response. 

 

North Sea Oil was a great opportunity for them, it was for me; but of course it was built upon the collapse of ship-building and ended in a general exodus of talent. There has been no repetition in the wind-farm sector, we simply don’t have the necessary work-force. 

[Nearholmer]

Its an interesting topic, and it would be good to hear how those old enough to be "wise" to it at the time perceived it.

 

Judged by things like Emmett's work, the way the National Trust was acting to take over properties and/or supporting existing owners who couldn't afford the up-keeps, the sentiments that get satirised in books like "Paradise Postponed", the beginnings of canal and railway preservation, many of the Ealing Comedies, and I could go on, there was very definitely a thick seam of nostalgia, or regret of various colours, for an old-order disappearing.

 

Which seems a bit odd at first glance, given how bl00dy horrible the 1930s had been for most people.

 

My reading of it is that the people with the deepest regrets, because they had most to loose in the postwar order, were the already-adult middle to upper-middle classes, the minority of people who had actually been comfortably-off, used to a generous helpings of social-deference, and a comforting near-absence of social mobility before WW2, but had to get used to paying a lot more tax, being deferred to a tiny bit less, and losing-out a bit as meritocracy advanced. Loss of Empire also bought back to the UK people who were used to a very different social order from the one they found themselves coming to - they probably rather regretted not having the privileges of the colonist. But, it seems that a great many other people, people who were objectively benefiting from change, were also rather regretful that "progress" was doing away with the picturesque and the characterful.

 

Its probably the period that saw the whole "Heritage Britain" mentality begin to really take root , and the national psyche begin to slowly shift from looking forwards to forever looking backwards.

 

Surely the "brain drain"(1) was about a slightly later-born cadre, who had actually benefited from the trend towards meritocracy, but were seduced away, mainly to the US, by the gold and comparative comfort on offer? The shortage of technicians and artisans that has so damaged the UK since the 1970s hasn't occurred because "everyone with any gumption" went to Aus or wherever; it has occurred because, after an uncharacteristic thirty years of high-quality, in-industry training, the UK fell back to its old habit of not training anything like sufficient people in technical knowledge and skills from about 1980 onwards.

 

(1) Worth considering that, even now, its blooming hard to get figures for whether or not there actually was a net "brain drain" from the UK. Some figures suggest that we actually hoovered-up an awful lot of good brains from developing countries, notably into medicine.

 

Edited June 13, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Welchester]

40 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Its an interesting topic, and it would be good to hear how those old enough to be "wise" to it at the time perceived it.

 

Judged by things like Emmett's work, the way the National Trust was acting to take over properties and/or supporting existing owners who couldn't afford the up-keeps, the sentiments that get satirised in books like "Paradise Postponed", the beginnings of canal and railway preservation, many of the Ealing Comedies, and I could go on, there was very definitely a thick seam of nostalgia, or regret of various colours, for an old-order disappearing.

 

Which seems a bit odd at first glance, given how bl00dy horrible the 1930s had been for most people.

 

My reading of it is that the people with the deepest regrets, because they had most to loose in the postwar order, were the already-adult middle to upper-middle classes, the minority of people who had actually been comfortably-off, used to a generous helpings of social-deference, and a comforting near-absence of social mobility before WW2, but had to get used to paying a lot more tax, being deferred to a tiny bit less, and losing-out a bit as meritocracy advanced. Loss of Empire also bought back to the UK people who were used to a very different social order from the one they found themselves coming to - they probably rather regretted not having the privileges of the colonist. But, it seems that a great many other people, people who were objectively benefiting from change, were also rather regretful that "progress" was doing away with the picturesque and the characterful.

 

 

Could a related factor be that after the war nobody wanted to go into domestic service, and so the sort of people you describe had to fend for themselves for the first time?

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

The shortage of technicians and artisans that has so damaged the UK since the 1970s hasn't occurred because "everyone with any gumption" went to Aus or wherever; it has occurred because, after an uncharacteristic thirty years of high-quality, in-industry training, the UK fell back to its old habit of not training anything like sufficient people in technical knowledge and skills from about 1980 onwards.

 

Technicians and Skilled Workpersons (won't use the A word) worked in "cost centres" as far as the folk polishing their arses at a desk further up the chain were concerned.  It was seen as more cost effective to poach them from the few(er) companies training them up as a higher initial wage was cheaper than paying a trainee for x years and paying for their C&G/OND/HNC/Uni qualifications.

 

And thus the whole house of cards fell down and we ended up with government funded schemes for the youth of the country providing Level 1 NVQs in hairdressing, food-preparation and the ineffable ECDL.

 

To be fair, at one point there was a government scheme in higher skills, I was lucky to get an MSc out of it. But it was deemed too expensive so it was stopped after a couple of years and things fell back to basic qualifications.

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Which seems a bit odd at first glance, given how bl00dy horrible the 1930s had been for most people.

I wonder whether it was more a case of "we fought a war for all this and now the b@stards want to destroy it all anyway".

[rockershovel]

21 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

I wonder whether it was more a case of "we fought a war for all this and now the b@stards want to destroy it all anyway".

 

There was certainly a widely-held view of “no return to the 1930s”. My wife’s family abandoned the land around that time, decamping to Cambridge to work in developing employers like Pye, Ciba-Geigy or Marshall’s Airfield. 

[Nearholmer]

There were probably multiple things at play, and almost certainly a large dollop of simple innate conservatism, plus the occasional donning of the rose-tinted specs, because that’s human nature.

 

My good lady’s family sometimes make me chuckle, because in one breath they tell a convincing tale of how shockingly tough life was in rural Ireland until the 1970s, and how harsh and callous it could make people, and in the next get all dewy-eyed over the cosy family atmosphere of it all.

 

 

 

 

[Fat Controller]

58 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

There were probably multiple things at play, and almost certainly a large dollop of simple innate conservatism, plus the occasional donning of the rose-tinted specs, because that’s human nature.

 

My good lady’s family sometimes make me chuckle, because in one breath they tell a convincing tale of how shockingly tough life was in rural Ireland until the 1970s, and how harsh and callous it could make people, and in the next get all dewy-eyed over the cosy family atmosphere of it all.

 

 

 

 

There's a Welsh word, 'hiraeth', that I always translate as a longing to go back to a place one couldn't wait to get out of in the first place...

[Ohmisterporter]

I cannot remember if this has been touched on before but a practice that was endemic in the 50s/60s and earlier, was the paying of women at lower rates than men for doing the same job. Still goes on today in some places. Oddly enough, in my working career of fifty five years I never worked for any firm that did not pay women and men equal pay for the same work. In the textile industry, weavers, spinners, cloth lookers, machinists, all earned the same when I started my apprenticeship. The same holds true for the carpet makers, plastic moulding operators, inspectors, and finally university porters that I worked with. There were some industries that were men only; construction sites for example, but even then there were a handful of women learning trades and some really good engineers and managers. 

 

Remember when restaurants served bigger portions to men, for the same price, and women were served beer in half pint glasses? My mother and aunts would think a woman drinking from a pint glass was "common". Working their way through industrial quantities of Port and Lemon was all right though.

 

 

[Mark Saunders]

3 minutes ago, Ohmisterporter said:

 

, and women were served beer in half pint glasses? My mother and aunts would think a woman drinking from a pint glass was "common". Working their way through industrial quantities of Port and Lemon was all right though.

 

 

The Ladies darts team would be served their beer in pints glasses but decant it in to a schooner for drinking; unlady like to be seen drinking pints!