Inspired by this GD thread characterizing Prince Charles as a “twit.” I’m not entirely clear on what the word “twit” means in British slang. Somehow I get the impression it expresses a concept slightly more complex than “fool.” It only ever seems to be applied to upper-class persons.
The clueless aristocrat seems to be a stock figure in British humor going back at least to Bertie Wooster. In BritCom we have Prince Harry in Blackadder the First (addressing the troops before the Battle of Bosworth Field on Ralph the Liar’s Day: “Now I’m afraid there may have to be a certain amount of violence – but we all know it’s for a good cause, don’t we?” [smiles]), the “Upper-Class Twit of the Year” contestants in the famous Monty Python skit, and even the gormless Roman (but British, really) officer in Monty Python’s Life of Brian (“Crucifixion?” “Yes.” “Good . . . first door on the left, one cross each. . . Crucifixion?” “No, sir, freedom . . .”). To what degree is it justified by real life? Are your gentry really that stupid and naive?
I’m not sure i’d count Prince Harry and the gormless Roman as twits (though the Prince Regent in Blackadder III would be a good example). Naive, perhaps, and that’s certainly part of the stereotype, but they seemed competent. Bertie Wooster is pretty much the paragon of the upper-class twit stereotype.
Twit isn’t only used for upper-class persons, either. I would say twit itself just means “stupid”, but the upper-class twit would typically be stupid (and unaware of it), naive, foppish, very certain of their inherent “betterness”, and (often) of an upbeat personality.
I haven’t met any members of the gentry, so I couldn’t say how true the stereotype is. Prince Charles does (totally IMHO) at times appear surprisingly naive, but i’ve never considered him to be actually stupid. The Queen, OTOH, while again naive at times seems pretty clever. I suppose Charles is a mix of his mum’s diplomatic tendencies and his dad’s…uh… diplomatic tendencies.
With a heavy dose of inverted snobbery, I’d say the upper-class twit is unaware of his shortcomings, because his priviledges have compensated for them.
On a more even-handed basis, there’s a fine line between the twit and the eccentric.
Re. Life of Brian: Pontius Pilate was the upper-class twit, was he not? So out of touch with reality that he doesn’t realise the crowd is mocking him.
If they were that stupid, the British aristocracy would not have mutated to survive all these centuries. Such people once held down a quarter of the earth’s surface with minimal military means.
Like Basil Fawlty, Upper Class Twit of the Year is a monstrously exaggerated caricature of a certain recognisable type which many people have at least met once or twice, though the stereotype is probably 3-40 years out of date. But sinecures of the sort which once supported such people are rare these days. They will have to have competence in something to get any kind of a living - the gentleman stockbroker with a long lunch is a thing of the past. Art dealing provides a refuge of sorts for them.
The best contemporary American example of an upper class twit was the government official who wondered why the poor people of New Orleans didn’t just drive away from the storm.
Or Paris Hilton. “Wal-Mart? Do they sell wall stuff?”
ETA: I’m aware, of course, that that specific remark may have been scripted. Still, that was the entire premise of her show: that she and Nicole had never had to deal with basic, day-to-day tasks.
I’d also say with the upper-upper class twits, you’re looking at a stereotype of massive inbreeding leading to stupidity, since it’s a small pool of families who are privileged enough to intermarry. Certainly at the royal level that’s a common joke.
Or the one when Great Aunt Margaret returns from tea with the new vicar and says to her friends in a horrified voice "Do you know he actually had no marmalade or honey
There was a perfect example of an upper-class twit on this week’s Apprentice. The guy was an ex army officer who, when tasked to take typical British food to sell in a French street market, took along great slabs of low-grade Cheddar cheese and wondered why the French would not buy the stuff.
His team also took some what were actually good sausages, but he fell down again by the way they were going to cook the things to give out as taste samples. Instead of taking along a small camping gas burner, he decided to use a method he had learned in the army on survival training. This entailed using an empty baked-bean can and some fuel . This apparatus didn’t work and they wasted two hours before another team member had the intelligence to get the sausages cooked in a nearby cafe.
Needless to say they lost a massif amount of money and they had to dump several kilos of the cheese before sailing back to England. Of course he was the candidate who was fired from the programme
You’re really going back to a different time with the Goodies and Monty Python, but no, I would say that with Tim Brooke-Taylor’s character they were poking fun at middle-class, Daily Mail-reading Middle England.
‘Prat’ doesn’t have the wide-eyed innocence of a ‘twit’. And being a prat is generally about a single event rather than one’s general behaviour - “made a prat of myself last night”, “stop being a prat”.
