Mark Andrews on Saturday: Farewell to Whitfield, Winfield and plain English
RIP June Whitfield, who will be much missed for the decades of laughter she brought to millions of people.
She was, of course best known for her partnership with Terry Scott in the Carry On films, the Bless This House movie, and of course Happy Ever After and its successor Terry & June.
I’ve never quite understood the antipathy from certain quarters about the latter, which pulled in millions of viewers and was surely one of the funniest sitcoms of its day.
Supposedly enlightened people who happily sit through hours on end of pretentious joke-free comedy turn their noses up at something which reflects everyday life most of us can relate to, and actually makes us laugh. It just seems like snobbery, plain and simple.
Days before her death, Whitfield observed that many modern comedians appear to consider foul language a substitute for wit, and that the tyranny of political correctness means ‘you cannot make a joke about anybody.’
She described the Carry On films as “Not at all politically correct, which was always a good thing.”
Hear, hear. And you can’t help but think that decades from now, people will look back at the millennials with the same puzzlement as we look back on the Victorian era. And wonder how a generation became so repressed and humourless.
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TALKING of millennials, how woke are you?
The chances are, if you are not a millennial, you will have no idea what that means.
Neither did I until this week, but having seen the expression a number of times in the broadsheet newspapers, I thought I had better find out.
To be honest, even now I’m not entirely the wiser. An internet search said something about being ‘awake to social injustice’.
I think woke is basically a trendy word for angry, particularly popular among young people with a perceived sense of grievance, either for themselves, or on behalf of others who might themselves not be angry at all.
Maybe it was always thus, young people have always been angry ¬– I know I certainly was.
But why do they need to speak a different language? It seems strange that people who talk so much about equality and inclusivity insist on using a vocabulary that excludes anybody over the age of 25 from their discourse.
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AND talking of farewells, it is 10 years tomorrow since Woolworths closed its doors for the last time, and its legacy is still felt in many of our towns a decade on.
Since then we have lost countless big-name retailers which we probably thought would be around forever.
A decade ago, who would have expected British Home Stores, Comet, Maplins and Toys R Us to vanish into thin air?
And now HMV, with its much-loved Nipper the dog emblem, also hangs in the balance.
Yet while it is sad to see any retailer go out of business, particularly for those who lose their jobs, Woolworths was always very different.
As children, Marks & Spencer and BHS were the stores we were dragged through kicking and screaming, metaphorically if not literally.
Beige, bland and full of the things that parents thought we needed rather than wanted.
And then there was Woolworths, brash and red, and packed with toys, records and sweets.
Attempts to revive the brand as online retailer were always going to fall flat, because the whole point of Woolworths was that it was a sensual and sensory experience, the sweet scent of the pick ‘n’ mix, the plasticky smell of the vinyl counter, the bright colours and the cheery coffee bars.
Brands come and brands go, but our high streets are the poorer for Woolworth’s passing. That was the wonder of Woolies.
