By Mike Gray Cleese and other stars of the post-war England ‘satire boom’ (beginning with Beyond the Fringe) were doing almost as much to destroy England as the Luftwaffe: What was left of Britain after the war was barely worth “satirizing”; the Pythons et al were “spoofing” an “Establishment” that was already dying, but they thought they were pretty brave to be trampling its grave. Weirdly, the Establishment then worked hard to ingratiate itself with these cheeky young upstarts, with gauche displays such as the awarding of those OBEs to The Beatles. — Kathy Shaidle Apparently, there’ll always be people saying there’ll always be an England: Cleese also spoke about the shift in British attitudes away from a “middle-class culture” and the emergence of a “yob culture”. He said: “There were disadvantages to the old culture, it was a bit stuffy and it was more sexist and more racist. But it was an educated and middle-class culture. Now it’s a yob culture. The values are so strange.” He added that he preferred living in Bath to London because the capital no longer felt “English”. “London is no longer an English city which is why I love Bath,” he said.

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