I grew up watching Alf Garnet and always thought he was very funny, so did my elders of the day, not that many people were offended by him or so it seemed. Most people understood that Alf was an actor and it was humour, most people laughed, if you've ever seen Warren Mitchell out of the role and in the flesh you'd understand what a brilliant actor he really is because the two, Alf and Warren, are two complete opposites.

I hadn't watched any of his material for many many years so I was surprised and pleased when I stumbled across the video I posted. I laughed again, equally as hard if not even harder, at times I had to pause because I was almost in tears with it all. What was just brilliant is that he was able to talk about a huge range of very contentious subjects and make fun of them whilst everyone accepted it was stand up comedy: religion, politics, race, gender, he tackled them all. Nobody appeared to be seriously offended at his remarks and if they were, they not only hid it but they seemed to accept this was just humour, just in the same way that very very few people are offended by Billy Connelly's use of the F'word. It would, of course, be socially unacceptable today in the current PC climate to tackle such subjects in a similar way, the reality is that lawsuits would immediately follow and fatwahs issued, all of which is beyond sad.

I shall watch that video again soon, it's a great pick me up when you're feeling less than 100%.