I'm sure there are hundreds if you care to search. Can nobody on here figure out how Youtube works? I don't think anybody's denied the fact that some of his material was fuckin disgraceful, and best forgotten. But most of it wasn't and as I said, technically, he was brilliant. It all comes down to context. Like it or not, the 70s early 80s was an offensive neck of the woods...another country...they did things differently. I got called into school a few years back when my lad had been in a fight..sort of long-winded conciliation process, involving both parents which minutely involved the 'background' causes, and seemed to end with both lads making a pledge to avoid doing it again. In the 70s, they just hit us both with a stick and threatened more if it happened again. Thinking back, I'm totally offended. Most stuff was offensive. Things have progressed, but there's a bit chunk of the 'condescension of posterity' going on here.
For me, Manning was easily the best on 'The Comedians'...which early on was enormously popular. It used to rival Coronation Street. And, in fact, he was widely regarded as such by most people who watched it...it had a huge working class following. Now, other than the 'arresting and charging the 1970s' type reaction which emerged over Saville, what are you do about it. In retrospect, it was a big offensive, fucked up decade...like every previous decade. So do we all just write off the past as racist and a bit unpleasant and congratulate ourselves on our right-on progressiveness?
OK, there is a certain ,limited, legitimacy to the oft heard defensive claim that "Those 1970's - were a different era -- a different moral universe" . Having been a schoolkid in the 1960's, in Surrey, I can certainly confirm the universal assumption amongst my all-white peers (including me I'm deeply ashamed to admit) that the most revoltingly vile racist (anti Black and anti Semitic) , and misogynistic "jokes" were perfectly OK - in fact mandatory. Similarly , in the 1970's the "joke culture" amongst the general public of all classes was toned down a tad from the 60's , but was still profoundly racist and sexist (a hangover from the "White Supremacist" ideology which facilitated the Grand British Imperial Project) - and Bernard Manning's exceptionally vile act was a reflection (and of course also a reinforcement) of this deep Imperialist cultural sickness. Of course Manning's TV joke selection was always a very cleaned up version of his stage act in his own club . This act was REALLY vile - and it is well recorded how he would vilify and abuse any Black person in the audience who made the mistake of going along to one of his shows thinking it would be "a good night out". But then this was also the era in which , certainly in my then "revolutionary" party, the International Socialists, (though not so in the rather more enlightened IMG) , the mandatory aping of the worse reactionary attitudes of the typical idealised hairy arsed male shop steward militant made it perfectly acceptable for the typical male IS member to come out with quite shocking misogynistic and anti Gay (that's "poof" of course) jokes and comments.
But what's your core point, and intention here , Ronnie ? Why this attempt to separate "Manning the technical performer" from Manning the vile reactionary shitbag ? Now I was a vile totally historically ignorant over-privileged middle class schoolboy in the 1960's to come out with and laugh along with those horrible "concentration camp" , and "Rastus" jokes", and all those who continued to trade in racist and sexist jokes in the 1970's were ignorant bastards too. People can indeed be "trapped "in the generalised ideological mindset of the times - that's what ruling class ideology is all about after all , but why on earth would anyone still defend ignorant, racist, misogynistic fuckers like Bernard Manning , as "nevertheless brilliant performers" , TODAY ?
"technically, he was brilliant. It all comes down to context. " . Well yeh, a rabble rousing, homophobic, racist, misogynistic twat, but with a great delivery technique. By that standard, we need to "give Oswald Mosley a reappraisal" -- "A truly gifted public speaker--- and widely popular" - and give him a "free pass" on the actual content of those speeches - "given the widespread ideological context of the times" ? . Hmm , I don't think so, Ronnie, he was a TOTAL TWAT too !
