Only Fools and Horses Complete

lol its pronounced chow

TomPF: “Where I slightly disagree is in ” It has as it’s (anti-) heroes the non-conformist, the outsider, the underdog, the loser striving for dreams which will never be realised.” This, IMO, is far more a hallmark of American, rather than British humour. In Blackadder, for instance, Baldrick is forever downtrodden,”—————————–There is a long list of (anti-) heroes of the type I described (not all, of course, having every single one of those traits): Tony Hancock, Harold Steptoe, Basil Fawlty, Reginald Perrin, and the protagonists of Peep Show, The IT Crowd, The Young Ones, The Office, Extras, Red Dwarf, Only Fools and Horses and, yes, Blackadder spring to mind. Baldrick isn’t the main protagonist but a subsidiary character of a familiar type, Manuel in Fawlty Towers and Piers in The New Statesman being other examples, where the anti-hero takes out their frustration on someone who is even more put upon. The audience also empathises with that whipping boy at those moments and I would suggest that this is a sign of a certain sophistication. The audience is being credited with the ability to empathise with an anti-hero with major flaws and recognise the fact that they can sometimes be as bad as the people who are oppressing them.It is this aspect, I would suggest, which often leads to the failure of US translations of UK series such as Men Behaving Badly and Red Dwarf. The US versions try to clean up the anti-heroes, cast more conventionally attractive actors, smooth out their more unpleasant traits and generally try to make them more “loveable” and less of an obvious failure – thus losing the edge, the reality and much of the source of the humour.To drag this back on topic. Curtis seems to me a prime example of the type who initially bought into the CAGW idea fairly unthinkingly, because it seemed to “feel right”and fit in with their world view. At first there were no voices at all raised in the UK media questioning the orthodoxy. It wasn’t until C4 showed “The Great Warming Swindle” that most people would have been exposed to any doubt at all. By then it was too late for many, and as all doubters since have been characterised as cynical right-wing idealogues funded by Big Oil once their Tobacco funding ran out, then you can see how hard it is to start again from square one with your thinking if you are anywhere to the left of right wing.

I'm going to head for a shower now. Going to miss a bit of the next episode of Only Fools And Horses =/ Tweet soon

Trigger off Only Fools and Horses lol