UK (or other) folks: explain these 'Good Life' jokes please?

Cafe Society
1

I’m a proper anglophile, people. As a very young girl in the '70s I watched the PBS airings of Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R, among many other series. I’ve been hooked on your shows ever since.

My most favorite of all is The Good Life (or Good Neighbors to us here in the States) – either that or Yes Minister, it’s a close call. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched all four GL series, plus the Christmas special – though not the “Royal performance” in front of the Queen, as I understand it wasn’t very good, and I kinda don’t want to see any mediocrity in what I otherwise consider a perfect series.

Anyway. Of course there were some references over the years that gave me trouble. It wasn’t a hugely topical show, such as Drop the Dead Donkey or even Yes Minister (which really was pretty universal anyway). Heck I think Monty Python had more obscure references that I didn’t understand and they purposely tried to stay away from topical humor.

Meanwhile, with Good Life I’ve been able to suss out who Acker Bilke was (Tom compares a garden gnome to him), Pan’s People (Barbara mocks Tom for yelling outdoors at birds and asks if Pan’s People were after him), I get who “Lord Kitchener” is and why Barbara wryly comments that Tom should’ve realized how old the generator was when he saw Kitchener’s name on the box, I’ve learned what the 1970s “power cuts” were, and I already knew who Tom’s referring to when he jokes about “Wedgie” to Barbara (Yes Minister, which I know came out later but I saw it before seeing GL for the first time, made a few jokes at Tony Benn’s expense).

But two jokes have eluded me. Here goes:

  1. I think I’ve asked this before but I’m taking another stab at it. It’s from the episode “It’s a Pig’s Life” where their pregnant sow Pinky finally gives birth to her litter. As usual, Jerry and Margo are roped into helping, and things are going fine until one piglet comes out very small and isn’t moving much. The lines are:

TOM: “I’m afraid it’s a runt.”
JERRY: “How very Anglo Saxon.”

Here’s the segment in question with a little bit of a lead-in, though I doubt the context matters. It’s obviously a reference to “runt” but I just don’t get Jerry’s response, which gets a ton of laughs from the audience (it’s not a laugh track, this is a live audience).

I think in a very old discussion here some put forth the idea that it was a pun on, um, the c-word, but that seems so atypical of the gentle form of humor from writers John Esmonde and Bob Larbey that I’m just not convinced of it.

There were a few “blue” jokes on the show, but the closest they came to something like that was when Jerry is taking a message on the phone and Margo walks in to overhear him saying the caller’s last name, “Burke,” and she looks askance at him until he continues, “with a ‘u’ and an ‘e’, right.” (“Berk” being a somewhat rude insult at the time, considering it’s an insult derived from “Berkley Hunt,” which is the rhyming slang for that same c-word.)

Anyway. Can anyone explain it to me?

  1. In “Whose Fleas are These?” Barbara and Tom have just learned they have fleas and are trying to avoid informing the authorities, as they fear their animals will be taken away. Also they naturally don’t want to “infect” anyone else with “the little offenders” as the exterminator later calls them.

At one point, Barbara’s alone in the kitchen when the postman comes by with a parcel. She is startled and rather hilariously OTT regarding how desperate she is not to come in contact with him, so she first hides, then refuses to open the door to him.

Here’s the amusing scene (Felicity Kendall is so damn adorable in this role; even though Barbara was sometimes a ‘straight man’ for the other characters, she’s really at the heart of the show, methinks.)

What I wanna know is: what the heck film is he talking about?

Anyway many thanks in advance to anyone who can help me. These questions have been bugging me for the past fifteen years since I’ve started watching the show, and (since the DVDs came out) I usually run through all four series once a year.

2

I’m nearly certain the Rod Steiger film is “No Way to Treat A Lady”. No clue about the Anglo Saxon runt.

3

I believe that the answer to your second question is No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). I didn’t see the movie though.

4

AH! Bless you both, yes, that makes sense, especially the timing (GL was mid-seventies). I’ve looked at Steiger’s filmography but he made soooo many films (140ish) it seemed daunting to figure out which was which. Yay! Another mystery solved.

5

all i have is runt rhymes with _unt

anglo saxons are credited with lots of swear words, so i think your initial thought was correct

6

The Anglo-Saxon reference is of the “pardon my French” ilk.

See this page for some information.

The Anglo-Saxon words tend to be shorter and tend to be seen as cruder by many people. Think of words like fuck, shit, cock, and (particular to the joke being made) cunt.

7

Wow. So you guys really think that the joke is Jerry – who admittedly is very tired and somewhat cranky at this point having been woken up in the middle of the night to help midwife a pig – punning on runt/cunt?

BTW sorry for wimpily using the “c-word” euphemism earlier… I just really hate the word. And yet Malcolm Tucker’s “Oh I know you hate swearing, so I’ll just say F star star CUNT!” is one of my favorite lines from In the Loop, so go figure.

Anyway, if your explanations are correct, I’m still surprised the audience picked up on it so immediately. Even allowing for the much-better-educated British public (certainly more so than dumb Yank me), especially back then, it doesn’t appear to be that obvious a joke. Seems like the sort of thing where it would take a second or two to sink in and then the audience would react with laughter. This one was instantaneous.

And TGL wasn’t one of those shows where they wouldn’t have let the audience take their time – the pacing was moderate, not fast, and I doubt the producers would’ve tweaked the laughter to jump in on Paul Eddington’s delivery like that. There were several examples where the audience takes a few beats to absorb a joke, and the director and actors rather seamlessly allow the pause to happen.

Whew. I don’t mean to get all Abed-on-Community with the meta-analysis of a one-off joke in a 40-year-old sitcom. (Forty years old! Holy crap, how is that possible?!!) But as I said, it’s just one of those things that I run into every time I watch the episode, which is usually once a year. I’ll take your word for it, and thanks very much for the explanation.

8

Bear in mind that it’s a very much more commonly used word here than it is there. The audience would have been quite used to hearing it. Also, it’s not a programme that shies away from innuendo or suggestiveness; some of the lines that used to make my parents laugh when I was a kid would have made me blush if I’d known what they meant!

9

My take is that it is not a play on the word “cunt”. He doesn’t deliver it that way and the audience don’t react that way, and besides, as you say bawdy comedy wasn’t really what The Good Life was about. Had it been Sid James delivering that line in a Carry On film, followed by a salacious laugh, then yes, it could have been a rhyming joke. But I think the point here is just that “runt” is the sort of earthy, agricultural term that you might expect to hear from a farmer, but not in someone’s garden in genteel Surbiton. In keeping with the basic running joke of the show, the incongruity of the Goods’ back-to-basics lifestyle in the middle of conventional suburbia.

10

There were some slight innuendos, but nothing quite that, er, earthy (except the “berk” line alluded to earlier, but even that’s pretty tame)… The “ruder” dialogue was usually fairly low-key. I’m thinking of exchanges like, after Geraldine the goat has a run-in with a dog and eats its rubber ball, Tom later milks the goat and tries to make goat’s milk butter, without much success. He and Barbara take a look inside the butter churner and say:

(Actually this is another reference I don’t get. When Barbara stares at him in shock, Tom says quickly, "“Sawber ones!” – which I’m probably spelling very incorrectly. I always assumed it was some kind of brand name, like Spaldeen rubber balls.)

Or this in the episode where Tom & Barbara are exhausted after planting their seed potatoes, Tom comes up with a plan to go to bed at 8:00pm and “go to bed with the sun, get up with the sun.” Barbara agrees, bushed, but then thinks about it and says:

But I think the best argument I have for why the “cunt” reference seems out of character for both the show and Jerry is that for Jerry Leadbetter to make a crack like that in front of Margo would have been suicide. And even if he did, there’s no way we wouldn’t have gotten a reaction short of Margo looking shocked by Jerry’s reference and a rapid-fire “Jerry!” in remonstration.

I gotta agree here. A decade or so later with “Blackadder” or “The Young Ones,” sure, I’d expect that kind of reference (and probably without bothering with innuendo, at least in TYO). Admittedly even Monty Python made a reference (and it was largely censored if I recall correctly) in the Mr. Smoketoomuch sketch, where Eric Idle plays a man who can’t say the letter “c” and so he replaces it with “b.” Later he comments, “what a silly bunt.” Still, that’s the Pythons, not Esmonde/Laraby.

But I could definitely be wrong. I’m not 100% sold your theory that the Anglo-Saxon reference relates to a word like “runt” because it’s so rustic and farmerly… This is third season The Good Life and I’d imagine Jerry would be used to Tom and Barbara’s eccentric, rustic lifestiyle.

(You know I never realized this until just now… holy cow, is there an intentional joke reference in the fact that down-to-earth Tom and Barbara are the “Goods” while upper middle class Margo and Jerry are the “Leadbetters”?!)

11

I would hazard that this is merely how they slipped it past the censors. On paper it looks like the rustic interpretation, and furthermore having someone react in an outraged manner would have drawn attention to it in the script. It was definitely a cunt joke, subtly written.

12

There’s no way The Young Ones would have been allowed to say “cunt”, uncensored. Even today, while I think you do very occasionally hear the word on free-to-air TV, it would have to be well after the 9pm watershed. “Fuck” has become more common, and if you watch TV shows or films aired after 9pm you may hear that word. Obviously, in the case of certain films, you will hear it repeatedly.

Monty Python got away with that joke by being indirect, and being an “edgy” show (by the standards of the time) on BBC2, which was then the BBC’s more daring, minority interest channel. The Good Life was a family sitcom on the mainstream channel BBC1.

13

Slipping ‘lewd’ jokes past the censors is a time-honoured British tradition. Round the Horne was full of references to homosexuality, and The Goons did it all the time in the 1950s. “Turn the knob on your side.” “I haven’t got a knob on my side.”

14

I know, but I don’t think this was one of those jokes. If Tom had said something like “what a silly old runt” then yes, definite “cunt” joke. But it seems to me that this was actually quite a poignant moment, and again it’s not delivered like a bawdy joke, nor did the audience or other characters react to it as one. Had the audience thought “wait, did Jerry just make a cunt joke?”, I think you would have heard a note of shocked laughter in their reaction. But it just gets a normal laugh.
OK, so it was deliberately understated so as to stay under the radar. But then it’s getting a bit like that “if a tree falls and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” thing. It a man makes a cunt joke, but doesn’t present it as one, and nobody realises that he made it, is it still a cunt joke?
I see Bob Larbey is still alive. I have half a mind to email him and sort this out once and for all.

(This must be the most times I have used the word “cunt” in the space of one thread, ever).

15

It’s not a ‘joke’ or a pun, it’s just a chummy conversational stream with a little whimsy, as you do.

16

I’m English and I think you’re guess on it being a reference to the c-word.

Though the c-wors is very rarely heard on UK TV even these days, innuendo has been a persistant staple of British comedy. Round the Horne has already been mentioned (1965-68 on BBC radio) and in that show every week they would have a limerick competion in which the winning limerick was always one in which the most obvious and also completely unbroadcastable ending was replaced by something that didn’t rhyme.

Of course even these days in the UK references to the c-word (before 9pm) can still be seen (by some at least) asinappropiated, e.g.:

However whislt I think a very obvious reference to the c-word would not have been deemed acceptable on The Good Life, the reference is ‘obscure’ enough and there’s enough doubt that it would be acceptable.

17

Wow, I love the conversation that’s developed about this.

Yes, that’s really what stops me from being in the “cunt” faction. (What an odd line.) It’s a preamble to what’s about to be a fairly darkish moment (for The Good Life), and probably the only serious disagreement between Tom and Barbara in the run of the series – or at least on a par with the other main argument (when Tom spends their “ten pound float” on a loom without consulting Barbara). It seems odd timing and presentation for a sudden joke of that ilk, and again, as both you and I have mentioned, the audience’s reaction is too immediate for what would be a roundabout, not-immediately apparent crack.

I do understand that if they were trying to get past the censors, they might have gone this way, but I just don’t see why Esmonde/Larbey would’ve wanted to go in that direction, at least at that point in the episode. More in their style would’ve been for a scene between Tom and Margo when, after things have turned less serious and they’re alone in the kitchen trying to keep the piglet alive, Tom were to make a comment like “all this for a silly runt,” and for a quick cut to Margo who’d start to make an objection, but then realize what he’d said and stay silent. (Or give the line to Jerry during his discussion with the constable in the car; the policeman would certainly have been the sort to express dismay about Jerry’s language, after which Jerry quickly explained “The pig. It’s a runt, officer” or something similar.

Ha! Me as well, and I’ve only used it twice now! Anyway I agree with you about Larbey, and in fact just emailed his agent asking if there’s a way I can get in touch with Larbey. I know it seems a long way to go for a 40-year-old joke, but truth is, even more than asking the question, I would love to tell him how much I’ve admired his work over the years and I’m distressed that I never made an effort to do so when John Esmonde was alive. That’s how much The Good Life has meant to me. It’s such a charming, down-to-earth, human show, a real gem, and I’d like to thank its co-creator if possible. It’s rather funny that I brought up The Young Ones because didn’t they have an episode mocking The Good Life at one point?

The audience certainly bursts into laughter over it, so they sure found it as funny as a joke. And this is right before things got very serious so I don’t think it was one of those “the audience is relieving its tension and are glad to be able to laugh so they go a bit overboard” moments, like in Edith’s rape attempt on All in the Family.

It may indeed be conversational stream, but it must have some meaning.

You certainly may be right. I might be skewed on how often the c-word is used on British television considering my two favorite current series are The Thick of It and Peep Show, both of which hardly stint on language of this sort.

Anyway it’s possible I’ll never get to fully understand the reference, or maybe there’s just not all that much to get. But it’s always a pleasure to talk about The Good Life, which I think is underestimated by modern audiences as being a twee, comfortable, inoffensive little nothing of a show, whereas I think it’s the comedy series that’s brought me the most joy outside of Monty Python, I Love Lucy and Yes Minister. Rather an odd quartet of shows now that I think of it.

18

It’s a joke that can be definitely read both ways. “How very Anglo-Saxon” usually means something like “how unrefined” or “how blunt”, and Jerry could either be noting Tom’s earthy use of a farmerism (which is how I’ve always read it, owning the DVDs and rewatching them from time to time), but I can also see now how it could be read as a ‘cunt’ reference.

I wouldn’t put much weight on the audience reaction. Not only was the joke quickly delivered, but Jerry said it in his “I’m delivering a joke” mode, and I suspect some part of the audience would have laughed at anything he said that wasn’t Latin (or, um, pig Latin).

19

Not that odd! We only own 6 or 7 TV series on DVD, and 3 of them are on your list (no Lucy here…).

20

But that wouldn’t have been more in their style. They didn’t draw attention to their jokes. Whether or not they were slyly slipping a rather ruder than average joke past the censor, the last thing they would have wanted to do would be to laboriously explain the joke, any joke, in the manner you’ve outlined above. Also, people are getting hung up on how often the word’s used on television. The audience’s immediate reaction isn’t based on how often they hear it on TV, it’s based on how often they hear it in real life; which is a lot oftener here than there. You’d also hear it being used affectionately and gently here, as a term of endearment almost, which would fit right in with the whole set up in this episode much more than I understand its American usage would (it’s aggressive and almost always offensive there, is that right?). It’s the sort of thing, for instance, that Tom and Jerry might call each other when Margo isn’t around.