Don't be so Snooty!

 

DON’T BE SO SNOOTY!

I SAY, chaps! That spiffing old bean Lord Snooty (and his pals) have become the latest victims in John Major’s classless society. 

This month the Beano’s longest-running character hangs up his top hat after 54 years because 90s kids cannot identify with a young aristocrat in an Eton collar. Well yah, boo, sucks, I say! 

Britain is fast losing its comic heritage. Already we’ve lost the likes of Corporal Clott and Dirty Dick (shame). Not to mention Little Plum, Your Redskin Chum and Colonel Blink, The Short-Sighted Gink! 

Now Noddy’s lost his golliwogs and isn’t allowed to share his bed with Big Ears, Sooty’s a 'New Man’ who knits while Soo mends motorbikes and they’re trying to turn Dennis the Menace into some kind of wimp. 

 

Lord Snooty (or Lord Marmaduke Bunkerton to give his real name) was never my favourite character, but he was a British institution and his posh pals were fair enough targets for harmless humour. What’s so wrong with teasing the toffs? 

It seems some adults take comics far too seriously. By all means vet the violence, but a little bit of schoolboy mischief in a publication aimed at children is mere escapism - hardly the first rung on the ladder to anarchy or class warfare. 

Before long they’ll be neutering Korky the Cat, recruiting the Bash Street Kids to the Peace Movement and turning Desperate Dan into a vegetarian. Have we all lost our sense of humour? 

2023 UPDATE: My prediction was not far wrong. The Beano recently celebrated its 85th anniversary with a major make-over of the Bash Street Kids - ‘Spotty' is now Scotty, ‘Fatty' is now Freddy and the gang has five new migrant members. Dennis is not much of a menace these days - his trademark catapult has been confiscated and he no longer “bullies” Walter (who is no longer called a ’Softy’).

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BREATH OF FRESH AIR FOR CUSTOMERS

I’VE been in some rough pubs in my time - you know, where the barmaids have sailors’ tattoos, the sawdust on the floor used to be the furniture and the Salvation Army comes in wearing riot gear. 

But in a Nottinghamshire hostelry I visited recently, I was left speechless (honest!) when I discovered a machine in the Gents which actually dispensed breath-freshener. Were they trying to tell the customers something?

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HEALTH MESSAGE GOES 

OVER OUR HEADS!

TO LAUNCH National Condom Week (campaign slogan: Slip Into Something Safe and Sexy), 1,000 inflated condom-shaped balloons were launched from Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park on Monday. 

Wasn’t this just a case of blowing things completely out of proportion?

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(This column was originally published in the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph on Saturday, 15 August, 1992