The Two Ronnies - 2000 Today

3 Classes of UK Family Life

Deal of the Week: David Frost - Clip 2

The Class sketch is a comedy sketch first broadcast in an episode of David Frost's satirical comedy programme The Frost Report on 7 April 1966. It has been described as a "genuinely timeless sketch, ingeniously satirising the British class system" and in 2005 was voted number 40 in Channel Four's "Britain's 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches".It was written by Marty Feldman and John Law,[6] directed by Jame Gilbert and features John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, and Ronnie Corbett.

 

Synopsis

Cleese, tall and patrician in appearance and demeanor, represents the upper class; Barker, of average height, the middle class, and Corbett, short in stature, the working class. Their dress also shows class distinction: Cleese in a slim-cut suit and bowler hat, Barker in loose-cut suit and homburg hat, and Corbett in a workman's jacket, scarf, and flat cap. Each in turn describes their social advantages and disadvantages, and contrasts them with their neighbours, an effect emphasised by the actors' relative heights as they look downwards or upwards to each other:

 

Barker: "I look up to him [Cleese] because he is upper class, but I look down on him [Corbett] because he is lower class." Corbett: "I know my place."

 

It is this situation that gives Corbett the pay-off line; as the others describe their advantages in the form of "I get ... (e.g. a sense of superiority)", his character finally looks up at the others and says "I get a pain in the back of my neck."

 

Reception and influence

The British Film Institute commented, "Its twinning of height and social position, combined with a minimal script, created a classic TV moment."The sketch's influence has persisted to the present day, having been referred to in 21st-century discussions of politics, sociology, and even football.

 

Spinoffs

Ronnie Barker wrote scripts for three further "Three Classes" sketches featuring the same characters, comparing their family life, their leisure activities, and their work.

 

A spinoff sketch was broadcast on the BBC Millennium programme, satirising three eras of English history. Stephen Fry represents Modern Man, Barker a miller from the Renaissance, and Corbett a weaver serf from the Middle Ages. The basic premise of the sketch is no different from the original. The sketch was incorporated into The Nearly Complete and Utter History of Everything.

 

Cleese revisited the concept as well with two new partners in 2017  (as a Wealthy Man, a Newspaper Editor and an Average Joe) for a political PSA.

U and non-U English usage

 U and non-U English usage, with "U" standing for "upper class", and "non-U" representing the aspiring middle classes, was part of the terminology of popular discourse of social dialects (sociolects) in Britain in the 1950s. The debate[clarification needed] did not concern itself with the speech of the working classes, who in many instances used the same words as the upper classes. For this reason, the different vocabularies can often appear quite counter-intuitive: the middle classes prefer "fancy" or fashionable words, even neologisms and often euphemisms, in attempts to make themselves sound more refined ("posher than posh"), while the upper classes in many cases stick to the same plain and traditional words that the working classes also use, as, confident in the security of their social position, they have no need to seek to display refinement.

The debate was set in motion in 1954 by the British linguist Alan S. C. Ross, professor of linguistics in the University of Birmingham. He coined the terms "U" and "non-U" in an article, on the differences that social class makes in English language usage, published in a Finnish professional linguistics journal. Though his article included differences in pronunciation and writing styles, it was his remark about differences of vocabulary that received the most attention.

The English author Nancy Mitford was alerted and immediately took up the usage in an essay, "The English Aristocracy", which Stephen Spender published in his magazine Encounter in 1954. Mitford provided a glossary of terms used by the upper classes (some appear in the table at right), unleashing an anxious national debate about English class-consciousness and snobbery, which involved a good deal of soul-searching that itself provided fuel for the fires. The essay was reprinted, with contributions by Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, and others, as well as a "condensed and simplified version" of Ross' original article, as Noblesse Oblige: an Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy in 1956. Betjeman's poem How to Get on in Society concluded the collection.

The issue of U and non-U could have been taken lightheartedly, but at the time many took it very seriously. This was a reflection of the anxieties of the middle class in Britain of the 1950s, recently emerged from post-war austerities. In particular the media used it as a launch pad for many stories, making much more out of it than was first intended. In the meantime, the idea that one might "improve oneself" by adopting the culture and manner of one's "betters", instinctively assented to before World War II, was now greeted with resentment.

Some of the terms and the ideas behind them were largely obsolete by the late 20th century, when, in the United Kingdom, reverse snobbery led younger members of the British upper and middle classes to adopt elements of working class speech (see: Estuary English and Mockney). Yet many, if not most, of the differences remain very much current, and therefore perfectly usable as class indicators.

U and Non-U Revisited Hardcover – March 29, 1979

by Richard Buckle

Remembering the unique and unforgettable “The Grumpy Guide To Class” / BBC TWO / The Grumpy Guide To Class - Part Three

Remembering the unique and unforgettable “The Grumpy Guide To Class” / BBC TWO /The Grumpy Guide To Class - Part Two

Remembering the unique and unforgettable “The Grumpy Guide To Class” / BBC TWO /The Grumpy Guide To Class - Part One

Remembering the unique and unforgettable

“The Grumpy Guide To Class” / BBC TWO

“Our mission here at Grumpy HQ is to lift the lid on some of the nonsense we have to put up with in life - and this week it is on the subject of class, apart from anything else it's all got so complicated... the toffs have run out of money, the middle class run the country, footballers are royalty, and everyone claims to be working class because it's the only class with street cred.

You don't know where you are anymore with class. Except we all know that napkins are very good and serviettes are bad, loos are acceptable and toilets are unacceptable, lounges are ghastly, but living rooms are spiffing, and saying pardon is an absolute no no. One way or another the class system is alive and well.”