Alf

Alf Garnett - who could forget him? Well, to be honest I couldn't remember the name of his sitcom, 'Till Death do us Part' until I was looking up the excellent actor Eamonn Walker on imdb.com and found that he was in the later 'In Sickness and in Health'.
My parents must have watched this TV programme and yet it was frowned upon, but then I think that was the point of it. You loved to hate the man who hated everyone. Alf didn't even like Scousers let alone black people. I wonder if anyone said 'innit' before Alf did.

It kinda stuck in my head yesterday, the whole Alf Garnett thing because of the full moon I think. How angry he always was. He would just sit there in his chair and spit ire about anyone and everyone, even about his wife, the wonderful Dandy Nichols, the 'silly old moo'.

And of course Tony Booth, Cherie Booth's dad was the hated Scouser son-in-law, although I think his character and Una Stubbs's weren't actually married.

Alf was hissing for England in some ways, we were supposed to be, and were, both fascinated and repulsed by him. His racism was being satirised at a time when racism wasn't so much the dirty word. Getting there, but not arrived. He was an angry little man frustrated by his own life. The working class conservative.

And the thing is, you know that man, he still exists. There are still permanently angry men sitting in armchairs all over the planet, hissing at and about nothing and no-one in particular, half understanding the world around them, not listening, not engaging, not expressing.
It's just that if they are mostly confined to an armchair, like Alf, they can't do too much damage, but if they are appearing pop-eyed and rabid, telling the Home Secretary that there are areas of the country he is HOME secretary of he can't go, then they are dangerous.
Alf Garnett was a ridiculous little man superbly portrayed by a brilliant actor. And he was a racist when he spoke, but not to the core.

Stands to reason (can't you still hear him saying that?) that the to the core racists who attacked John Reid yesterday were not actors but fanatics, the irony is that they were non-whites.

Bunch of silly ol' gits.