Alf Garnett

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Alf Garnett was a fictional character on the BBC television sitcom Till Death Us Do Part and later In Sickness and in Health. He has enjoyed a career outside of situation comedy, most recently appearing in a chat show named The Thoughts of Chairman Alf.

The character, played by actor Warren Mitchell, was reactionary, mean-spirited, selfish, bigoted, racist, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic, (Warren Mitchell was in fact Jewish himself). In In Sickness and in Health he also displays homophobia (largely because he is given a black homosexual to be his home help, whom he calls "Marigold", and who in turn calls him "Bwanha"!). Generally he blamed his problems on everybody else. His family was the usual target of his anger and frustration. On the show, Garnett was regularly ridiculed for his illogical views and hypocrisy by his family, but he stubbornly refused to admit he was wrong.

To add entertainment to the show, Alf was outraged when his daughter, Rita (played by Una Stubbs), decided to marry Michael, her long-haired, unemployed boyfriend (played by Anthony Booth) from Liverpool, a Catholic of Irish descent; precisely the type of person Alf most hated - the "Scouse Git" he called him.

Alf was generally a staunch supporter of the Conservative Party (though not Margaret Thatcher - he believed that a woman's place was at home "...chained to the bloody kitchen sink!" and blamed Thatcher's husband Denis for not telling her "to keep her place"!) and he supported West Ham United as well as being an admirer of the Queen and the Royal Family. That did not stop him from laying into them when he thought they deserved it.

The British public loved Alf Garnett - since everyone knew such a reactionary figure within their own locality - although the television show was heavily criticised for the character's prejudices. Writer Johnny Speight often commented that the character was supposed to be a figure of ridicule, but admits that not all viewers saw the satiric elements of the character. The character's name has become a standard description of anyone ranting at the world in general, and has even found its way into politics, Oswald Mosley dismissing Enoch Powell after his Rivers of Blood speech as "a Middle Class Alf Garnett".

It has been suggested that the selection of Warren Mitchell as Alf Garnett was due to him looking very similar to Sir Rudyard Kipling, who has also been perceived as a paternalistic racist; however this theory falls flat on two counts. Firstly, Mitchell was not the first choice of producer Dennis Main Wilson for the part. It was initially offered to Peter Cook, Leo McKern and Lionel Jeffries, but they all turned it down or were unavailable. Secondly, few members of public would have realised what Kipling looked like - however, they were familiar with Mathatma Gandhi, whom Mitchell's Alf Garnett bore a startling resemblance to, and which made for a hilarious juxtaposition.

Alf Garnett was the direct inspiration for Archie Bunker in the American sitcom All in the Family.

[edit] Trivia

• Mitchell left the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with a trained actors voice. A life-long, committed socialist - the total opposite to Alf! - he sold Socialist newspapers on street corners, shouting his wares in his beautifully trained voice. It was only when he realised why people weren't buying his newspapers that he developed Alf's voice, to appear more "working class".
• Johnny Speight had initially avoided anti-semitism in Alf Garnett's rants for fear of offending the Jewish Warren Mitchell. However, Mitchell pointed out that such a bigoted character would almost certainly be anti-semitic, and so Garnett became as vocal about Jews as any other minority group.