I was really happy last week when my Nationalism professor said that if we wanted to see Nationalism at work, we should watch Blackadder Goes Forth, particularly with Hugh Laurie’s character.
The Cambridge Footlights Revue (1982)
Starring (in their younger student days): Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Penny Dwyer, Tony Slattery, and Paul Shearer.
Come join us in the noblest of causes
The battle for national improvement
The creaking of leather and uniforms
Is the hymn of our British movement
We promise you riches and prosperity
Employment for the British working man
We promise you holidays in America
On exchange with the Ku Klux Klan
Eliminate the Paki, exterminate the Blackie
Pull out this disease by the roots
A British Movement government would repatriate the immigrant
To the tramp of Union Jack boots
Children in football grounds and classrooms
Are paraded in tiny rank and file
Incited to multi-racial aggro
Exalted by the war cry “Sieg Heil” (“Sieg Heil!”)
Imagine a society with skinheads roaming wild and free
And not a pair of thick lips in sight
Fumigate the Underground and sterilize the cricket grounds
White coat and white elephant
Whitewash and White Christmas
White horse and white rich and white poor
White dirt and white licorice
White helmets, white truncheons
White face and white Willy Whitelaw
A parody of course, of The British Movement, which was essentially a neo-Nazi political organization advocating a fully white Britain. If that wasn’t obvious.
I know that Hugh Laurie was frustrated at being typecast and that the role of Dr. House is a breakout role for him in America and internationally, and that it’s a good thing to evade being typecast…
But he’s just adorable in his British comedies.
Of course, he’s actually still my first choice for a live-action Samuel Vimes.
I’ve been meaning to read these for a long time. I loved the show, and appreciate that the two comments on the cover of the book are indeed from Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.
You don’t analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour. - Stephen Fry
The funniest writer ever to put words to paper. - Hugh Laurie.
Woo woo.
I just can’t believe it’s almost 20 Francs.
Prince George, who is described in his party news sheet as a great moral and spiritual leader of the nation; but is described by almost everyone else as a fat, flatulent git.
I really want “Blackadder the Third” to become free on iTunes now…
Jeeves and Wooster sing “Puttin’ on the Ritz”
“It seems to be a reasonably straightforward syncapated five four time signature.”
Lovely start to a wonderful British series: “Jeeves and Wooster” based on the books by P.G. Wodehouse.
Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie star as the titular characters in the 1920s, an English hopeless-rich gentleman wastrel and his supremely intelligent and cultured manservant Jeeves. Jeeves seems to know just about everything, and protects Bertie Wooster from scheming aunts and his own idiocy.
The series was made in the early 1990s, but is timeless in its quality.
Hugh Laurie is famous today for “House M.D.” but if you really admire the man, go back into his British roots where he was a household name as far back as 20 years ago.
Quite different from Dr. House, he played heartwarmingly dithering idiots in “Blackadder,” and in the excellent rendition of P.G. Wodehouse’s books in “Jeeves and Wooster”
