In part one of this look at the art of satire we discussed the work of the writers Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde, and the American comedians Bill Hicks and George Carlin. This week we enjoy some of the highlights of British comedy, and remember how four Oxbridge graduates started a satire boom that continues to this day.
THERE WAS once a very rigid class system in the UK. Everyone knew their place, and if they didn’t they were reminded of it by everyone else. The monarchy was at the top, below them the aristocracy, then the upper middle class, the lower middle class, the working class and probably a class below them - the non-working class, maybe. Or something. It was a system that worked very well for the comfortably off and almost everyone else complied; serving, grovelling and working themselves to death. The current way of life is not completely removed from that long-established system, but during the 1960s it took a good bruising, and satirists were partly responsible. They didn’t solve the problem, but they at least showed us that there actually was one.
Britain was economically flattened after the Second World War. Food rationing continued until 1954, and it was a long time before things started to improve for British citizens, but by the 1960s there was light at the end of the tunnel. After the war a free national health service was established, a free university education made available to many, and as a result, a majority of people were given unprecedented opportunities. Because of this the population became more vibrant and creative than ever before. That’s what a decent health service and education do for you - incoming Labour government please note. The UK was a world player in the fields of design, film, theatre and music, and something was stirring in the hallowed halls of Oxbridge…
Beyond the Fringe
On 22nd August 1960, four university graduates performed at the Edinburgh Festival in a comedy revue called Beyond the Fringe. Two of them, Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller had studied at Cambridge University; the others, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore, were Oxford educated. All four were exploding with talent and at this moment in comedy history they pooled their skills to produce a revue that set the tone for the rest of the decade. The UK enjoyed a satire boom that did a great deal, if not to weaken the establishment - in many ways it was embraced by it - to at least poke fun at the ruling classes. It gave the rest of us something to kick against, and who knows what influence it might have had on how we engage with politics?
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