Counter-Currents
Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?
1,943 words
Smoking cigarettes
And writing something nasty on the wall.
You nasty boy!
— Stevie Wonder, “I Wish”
[C]ontinual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. — Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
I recently celebrated my 62nd birthday, if you can call successfully cooking chili con carne and drinking wine with it instead of beer a celebration. It set me to thinking about what has changed during my lifetime, since I first sniffed the air in north London in March of 1961, sharing my birthday with Prince Edward, Sharon Stone, Bix Beiderbecke, and Osama bin Laden. So, what has changed?
Technology, obviously. When I was a little boy, the family telephone was made of the famously unbreakable Bakelite, a sort of toughened plastic. It was huge and fantastically heavy, as well as having a rotary dial and a plaited electrical cord. To call the emergency services you dialed 999, the number chosen because it would not be dialed by mistake. To call someone else, you dialed 100 and spoke to an operator, always a well-spoken women. You gave her the number and she patched the call through. After all these years, I still remember that our telephone number was Caterham 42805. Everyone, of course, now has their own telephone, and with global reach.
What else? Cultural ephemera, certainly. Everyone under the age of 40 now seems to have tattoos. When I was a kid, only squaddies (soldiers) and football nutters had tattoos, and you stayed away from both. Now, it seems mandatory. Full declaration: I have two tattoos myself, both small and discrete, one on either shoulder blade. The first, the worm Ouroboros, I had done primarily to see how much it hurt. The second, the name of my old boat, I got done in Alaska when I was drunk. I wasn’t that drunk, mind you — no reputable tattooist will decorate a person who is properly (or improperly) drunk. This is not because you might wake up and wish you hadn’t had your favorite band tattooed on your calf, but because alcohol thins the blood, and things can get messy. My brother told me that, and he is a tattooist in Sweden, so this is not fake news.
Then there was television. We didn’t get one until I was four, and the first thing I remember watching on this strange little monochrome set was the football World Cup Final in 1966, famously won by England. Some neighbors came by to watch, as they didn’t have a set of their own. Incidentally, and for anyone who has even the vaguest idea of what I am talking about, that disputed Geoff Hurst goal crossed the line, as far as I am concerned, because of Roger Hunt’s reaction. For those of you who don’t know what that means, that will be as obscure as Aramaic.
I remember watching the Moon landings with my dad while we were on holiday at the seaside. The screen was larger than ours because property-owners were much better off than we were.
But what else has changed, bar technology and the habit of scarification? It has to be more than just telephones and tattoos and TV. Funnily enough, it took two television programs, one from my childhood and one a bit over a decade old, to show me the major cultural shift that has happened to my country in my lifetime.
The comedy writing duo of Ian La Fresnais and Dick Clement is well known to Englishmen of my generation. They co-wrote many successful shows and films, and were perhaps best known for writing Porridge, featuring the great Ronnie Barker as a jailbird with a cynical sense of humor. They also wrote Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, a short-lived but brilliant sequel series to a 1960s original, and first broadcast in 1973. My father and I would watch it together, and even the opening credits and theme tune can still reduce me to tears. The lyrics have much to say about the change in British society which concerns me:
Oh, what happened to you?
Whatever happened to me?
What became of the people we used to be?
Likely Lads revolves around two old school friends, Bob and Terry. The latter has been in the army and returns to Newcastle, where the series is set, and finds Bob a success in business and happily married to Thelma. Their lifestyles clash, although their old allegiance lives on. And that’s it. These were the days of comedic writing which didn’t need anything more than mildly sarcastic dialogue and a comedy of errors set in a living-room or a pub. The most complex and malicious plot I can remember was the one where Bob and Terry have a bicycle race and brakes are tampered with. This was the great genius of British comedy, and saved a fortune in production. Watch an episode of Steptoe and Son and you are unlikely to see many outdoor scenes, and I would estimate that 90% of Porridge took place in a jail cell. It was like Beckett with laughs. To what can we compare it?
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Forty years later, in 2003 and running for 12 years, the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show broke records and became a cult classic. The plot is, in essence, the same as Likely Lads: Mark and Jez are university friends who end up sharing a flat (which is what the British bleakly call an apartment), Mark being reasonably successful in middle management and Jez being a hopelessly untalented musician and inveterate dope-smoker.
I am very fond of both shows, and their similarity strikes me just as forcefully as the great divide that separates the cultures that produced them. I can find no other way to put this other than to sound like a seven-year-old. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? is a nice program, Peep Show a nasty one. In Likely Lads there was simply banter, poking fun, and social embarrassment (standard fare for British comedy). In Peep Show, there are not many scenes in which someone is not acting in a vile, self-serving, malevolent manner. It is funny, but very nasty. I was reminded of this listening to the late, great English polymath Dr. Jonathan Miller — who was a former research fellow at my university and with whom I once had a very enjoyable chat about Plato’s Symposium by the canal in Camden Town — talk about his erstwhile colleague, the English comic genius Peter Cook. Cook’s work, said Dr. Miller, “was not nasty humor, but amiable satire.” How nostalgic that made me feel.
“Nice” and “nasty” are, I suppose, the childhood, starter versions of “good” and “evil,” like training wheels on a bicycle. “Nice” we can leave to its own devices. That was a nice evening, he’s a nice guy, that’s a nice dress. One knows it when one sees it, an all-purpose thumbs-up or nod of approval. “Nasty,” as a word, has had an etymologically rickety ride across Europe, via Norse, Germanic, and French before lodging itself into Anglo-Saxon. It is one of those words with a great stack of definitions and, by the time it reached English, it was appropriately polyvalent.
You can have a nasty cold, a nasty accident, or a nasty cousin who spreads nasty rumors. You can have a nasty cut on your hand, be warned of coming nasty weather, or watch a football player commit a nasty foul. There is far more nuance here in terms of approval or disapprobation. The word also took its place, when we were children, in a sort of semantic league table in which “nasty” played a singular role.
If you were deemed a silly little boy, or a stupid child, or a naughty boy, the blow was a light one, easily shrugged off. If, however, your parents or teachers called you or an act of yours “nasty,” the stakes were higher. To be a nasty little boy carried a moral underpinning which naughtiness did not have.
And that was my minor epiphany. My country has become nastier during my lifetime. But why? I haven’t been in England for over three years, not since people thought COVID was a Roman poet, but I have spent enough time on the poorer streets of London to know exactly why that city — and, increasingly, the country — has become rather a nasty place to live. The reason is the importation of, or at least failure to stop, black immigration and its attendant toxic culture, particularly from the Caribbean.
This is, at its base, a nasty culture: a combination of high testosterone, trash talk, an aversion to education as “acting white,” a virulent but currently unmentioned and unmentionable hatred of both women and homosexuals, a vile musical culture (I refer to rap and its bastard offspring rather than reggae, which I have always liked), and a keen awareness that white people are better viewed as prey than potential mentors. This all combines to act on any civilized society — as England was in my youth — with a fast-acting toxicity. And this venomous culture is very infectious. In the world of nature, there are various animals that mimic other animals, either for food or protection. In London there are many white kids, and increasingly Muslims, who dress, speak, and act like blacks for much the same reason. These kids — and teachers have told me this — see that black kids are not afraid of the police, not afraid of teachers, and not afraid of the disapproval of their parents (or parent, as is more likely the case for blacks). So they mimic them, and thus the malevolence, arrogance, violence, lawlessness, and disrespect spread like a virus. Ever wondered why blacks go on so much about respect and disrespect? It is because it is a reserve currency the legal tender of which is fear. The statement is not, “Respect me because I feel I have earned your respect.” It is rather, “Respect me or I’ll stab you.”
No white person in their right mind would live in a black or Muslim area of the United Kingdom. The old American adage springs to mind, that a university (or college) degree teaches you all about colored people while enabling you to earn enough money to live far away from them. As the black population, and the concomitant rust of their culture, increases, this will become less possible for white people, who are rapidly becoming the soft underbelly of Western countries, including and even led by my own. The UK will become, inexorably, a nastier place in which to live.
It is no coincidence that the two cultures that will not allow themselves to be laughed at in Britain are Muslims and blacks. They are allowed to laugh at themselves, of course, and there is plenty of self-referential humor. But the white man is not allowed to point and laugh. Nietzsche wrote that all humor contains cruelty, and Orwell that every joke is a small revolution. My mother used to say, as I am sure many mothers did, that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.
So, thank you, O black people. We helped you, educated you, taught you how to do things you would never have chanced across by yourselves, and then we foolishly accommodated you and your tiresome culture of machismo and laziness, both moral and literal. The Empire Windrush was a ship carrying a more dangerous payload than the deadliest of German warships. A nasty business, and one in which echoes that line from “Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?”:
What became of the people we used to be?
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24 comments
“a virulent but currently unmentioned and unmentionable hatred of both women and homosexuals,”
“This all combines to act on any civilized society — as England was in my youth — with a fast-acting toxicity. “
Civilized society? Homosexuals are a self-interested minority group, whose collective attitudes and actions are often at variance with the wider majority society that tolerates them. Women are not a minority group. Women – with the exception of militant feminists, do not seek to impose a programme of dysfunctional change on wider society.
If those of a certain lifestyle orientation – be it congenital, chosen or taken out of sheer desperation because no other route to physical gratification is available to them, want to be left in peace and unharassed, then they shouldn’t draw unnecessary attention to themselves.
I was really trying to point out that intersectionality will always collide with itself.
Ok, I understand – different minority groups that are at variance with the better interests of the majority host population will often have a clash of interests among themselves as they do not form a concrete block with a common goal.
Shows like Cheers and Seinfeld essentially are one set comedies with a constant array of slights and insults that are deemed offensive to current delicate sensibilities. Even flirting and stereotypes are deemed too demeaning for these days. I guess they can get away with more on a cable program like Curb Your Enthusiasm, but broadcast shows are too populated with blacks and mexicans and white men portrayed as dolts. There are none worthy of the time to view them anymore.
You are a fine writer, sir.
A Yank here, whose last trip to England was in the early 70’s, when it was still England.
Only in the last few years did I learn of the self-inflicted suicidal wound of this time bomb:
“The Empire Windrush was a ship carrying a more dangerous payload than the deadliest of German warships.”
God, how painfully true.
Thank you. Yes, Britain paid even more for the Empire Windrush than it did for the Empire.
Strange is it not that ‘diversity’ is making these once great European cities so similar? The same shabby ethnic-run takeaways, the same surly loitering ethnic youths … and soon perhaps the same call to prayer wafting over the whole foetid miasma?
Imagine it’s 1507, and someone, somewhere in Africa, is beginning to compose “The Book of the Courtier.”
These writings were cruelly stolen by plundering and uncivilised Europeans led by Vasco da Gama, thereby condemning the inhabitants of the African continent to a state of everlasting impoverishment that they tried to alleviate by taking each other as slaves and selling the slaves to the Europeans who later ended slavery in their colonies, whilst the down-trodden Africans were forced to continue the practice – all because that horrible Portuguese fellow mentioned earlier queered their pitch by stealing their draft of “The Book of the Courtier” which would have helped turn Africa into a global super-power.
That was excellent!!
Just think! – if it wasn’t for good ol’ Uncle Vasco confiscating the one and only draft of “The Book of the Courtier” from those incorrigible native slave traders way back in the early 1500’s, everybody in the world now would be speaking a form of proto-Atlantic Congo plus you and I would not have been born! – but at least now in 2023, we’re not speaking German – what’s not to like?
I saw London briefly in the mid-1980s. As much as I’d like to see it again, I don’t think I could; it would break my heart – and I’m only a damn tourist.
I feel exactly the same about Paris. I loved it, as everyone used to. The last time I was there I knew I would never go again. I suspect the same is now true of Dublin, another city I loved.
Instead of nasty, my wife uses the word ‘mean’, as in the US has become a very mean nation ! (although she is much more polite than I).
My wife, elderly mother and I were at a “Meat Raffle” at a large pub in Australia recently. The man next to us won a prize and went up to collect it. At the table we all were sharing he left both his wallet and cell phone. I turned to my wife and said ” you see the difference between a White high(er) trust society and some parts of the US – that wallet and phone would have be gone in seconds “.
Even though the major cities in Australia resemble a multiracial hell, there are still enough Whites in Australia (currently) to ensure a polite society.
Whereabouts in Australia were you and was the pub in a large city? I’ve never been to Australia, but I’ve heard the small towns and rural communities particularly in the north are fairly stable places in which to live.
I grew up in Sydney in the 70’s, and after marrying a second time in the US, (where I spend the last 10 years) I have returned to take care of my elderly mother. Melbourne and Sydney are the largest two Capital Cities and the influx of non White-immigrants has drastically changed the demographics of these places over the last 60 years. I am more familiar with Sydney than Melbourne, and there has certainly been a large ‘White Flight’ in the former.
Politicians here are adamant that large scale immigration will be a net benefit to Australia, regardless of what European Aussies want. They (Australian Politicians) rely on immigration to keep real estate prices artificially high (vested interests’) as well as consciously altering demographics in line with their ideologies (They will even smirk when telling the public this, ignoring the crime and racial conflicts attributed to this over the years).
There used to be a saying that the further North one went in Australia, the more ‘conservative’ the politics. Somewhat true, especially with regards to the state of Victoria – (the worst of the Covid 19 ‘lock downs’). I think you are correct when you refer to more regional places in Australia as more stable. Forget Sydney and Melbourne – that’s where every Patel, Amir and their spawn want to live, living of the fruits of my ancestors. Like urban blacks in the US, they are afraid of nature and leaving their concrete abodes. Strong communities in the regions are our future.
Yes, I understand Sydney is particularly bad.
“I was reminded of this listening to the late, great English polymath Dr. Jonathan Miller — who was a former research fellow at my university and with whom I once had a very enjoyable chat about Plato’s Symposium by the canal in Camden Town — talk about his erstwhile colleague, the English comic genius Peter Cook.”
Now, I am reminded by reading this that I first learned of this philosophy thing around 1970 by watching, on a small black & white TV, Miller’s 1965 BBC film of The Symposium, titled “The Drinking Party.” This was one of those modern dress versions, set rather appropriately at a public school reunion. Many soon to be better known folks were in it; Leo McKern as Socrates (later, in The Prisoner and Rumpole of the Bailey), Michael Gough (Tim Burton’s Alfred), the playwright Alan Bennett, even Roddy Maude-Roxby, who later was a token British comedian on one season of Laugh-in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al9u1lal6KY&t=296s
Miller reminisces about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG8tGeX0aSo
This also introduced me to early music, as Miller used a recording of Schein’s Banchetto Musicale as the score, I suppose because it was old and had “banquet” in the title. This was one of the first recordings using an “authentic” approach, appearing on DG’s Archiv series in the late 50s, although by the 80s or so it seemed almost Stokowskian. The musicologists are here actually having great fun, and DG has re-released it over and over, sometimes retitled Golden Dance Hits of 1600 or such, and even made its way into their 111th anniversary set.
Thank you for that. I had always wanted to see it but forgot that it was not called Symposium. All of that crowd, Miller, Bennett, Cook and Moore, were intelligent, witty, and funny, a three-card trick.
As well as the World Cup, 1966 also saw the BBC broadcast Alice in Wonderland, directed by Jonathan Miller. My family and other animals caught the first 20 minutes; agreed it was complete rubbish; and switched to the other channel. (The following year, we unanimously voted to stop watching the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour!) When I re-watched Alice decades later, I found it engagingly, hypnotically surreal. (Did Miller ever imbibe LSD?) The best version of the tale on film, if you’re not allergic to sixties’ experimental drama.
I recently re-watched the brilliant Open All Hours featuring the huge comedic talent of Ronnie Barker. Many years later there is the remake Still Open All Hours but it really comes a sad second.
So sad that the white people aspire to being n***ers. Like in this country it is tragically disgusting to see what white people have become bearing in mind their forefathers won the second world war. Baby boomers, which I am, the most worthless, cowardly generation.
I watched a documentary about American soldiers in the UK as everyone readied for D-Day. This old lady recounted that they would have dances that the American GIs would attend. She said a bunch of negroid American soldiers showed up and the next thing white American soldiers showed up and very quickly booted the negroids out!
If you still get excited about D-day, I confirm your judgment about boomers.
D-day was when your once respected isle started to become the shithole it currently is. Or, in the words of one of your more lucid compatriots:
“If the British soldiers on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 could look forward to the end of the century and see what England has become, they would not have bothered to advance another 40 yards up the beach”
David Irving
…to see what white people have become bearing in mind their forefathers won the second world war
Exactly. Baby boomers must bear in mind what Britain has become because of their forefathers winning the second world war.
Whites are simply ethically superior to other races – our glory and our downfall (but if enough of us who aren’t so cuckolded can just survive for a few generations of continuing reproduction, eventually whatever it is in our collective white gene pool that makes us such racial patsies will get de-bred .. and then, after another century or so, our people shall again be a force to reckon with).
A strong reminiscence, whose conclusion is almost certainly correct (even if very difficult to prove in social scientifically acceptable ways). The goodness, graciousness and virtuousness of whites cannot withstand integration with blacks (and probably other races, too). It is hard to be civilized.
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