[DanaC]

I laughed at Benny Hill as a kid. I was only partially aware of this stuff at the time, and most of that awareness was due to it being discussed overtly on television.

I don't think we should be ashamed of it - I don't think, on the whole, that the people and cultural products of the 1970s should be judged according to the values of 2015. There were odd examples of programme makers who should by then have known better, in which the values on show were behind the times and which were almost defiantly anti-progress - a good example being the Black and White Minstrel Show , which, at a time when most people were aware that blacking up minstrel style and making 'where am dat water melon' jokes was racist, were still peddling that schtick well into the 70s. But for the most part, it should be seen in the context of its day.

I should also point out that 'sexist' jokes and situations aren't all necessarily cruel and damaging. At an intellectual level, I understand that 'mother-in-law' jokes, which were a staple of 1970s club comics, play on a very particular set of stereotypes about women, and in particular the undesirable, battleaxe figure of middle-aged womanhood. That said - I listen to a set by Les Dawson, and it's full of mother in law jokes, most of which I still find funny, because it's cleverly written - and because the persona he played on stage was that of a middle aged man, beset on all sides by domineering women - and the characters on his wife and MiL were regular features of his jokes and monologues. It never felt like he was talking about all mothers in law - or all wives - like some of them did with the throwaway jokes. He was building a persona and a series of ongoing characters.

Some of his stuff doesn't work now - and the cultural assumptions underpinning them have shifted, but it was funny at the time.



And again - one of the few comedians who can do the 'my wife's so fat' schtick and have me laughing