As I said, the world is too .. well, it says it in one of the last paragraphs





Flo's sitting on the living room floor in housedress and pinny, her frowning expression flushed with anger. The table next to her has been tipped over, throwing a cup and saucer to the ground and breaking the saucer into six pieces. A nearby picture has been knocked askance by whatever force landed Flo and the table where they now are.
Andy stands over her with one hand thrust casually into his trouser pocket and the other leaning against the wall. He's looking Flo straight in the eye, and the smile on his open mouth suggests he thinks this is all pretty funny. "Look at it this way, honey," he says. "I'm a man of few pleasures and one of them 'appens to be knockin' yer about."
That cartoon appeared in the Daily Mirror on August 20, 1957, just two weeks after the first Andy Capp of them all. Andy was then a single-panel cartoon, appearing only in the paper's North-of-England edition, and would not get national publication until the following April. Seeing the drawing today, you can't help but gasp at the casual cruelty it portrays, yet it was thought so uncontroversial at the time that the Mirror chose it to open Andy's very first collection.





It's also important to remember just how common jokes like the 1957 cartoon were in British comedy at the time. On February 4, 1958, for example, the BBC broadcast a radio episode of Hancock's Half-Hour called The Male Suffragettes.
Tony Hancock was hugely popular in Britain at the time, pulling in an audience of about five million a week for his radio programme and another nine million for his weekly television show. Then, as now, the BBC was prone to fretting over any offence its programmes might cause, particularly those with the vast mainstream audience Hancock's Half-Hour commanded.
The Male Suffragettes has Hancock joining with Bill Kerr and Sid James to resist what they see as women's growing power to boss them about. "I can hold me own against men, but women are different," Sid complains. "If only we were allowed to thump 'em now and again, I'd be all right." The three men – all of whom play versions of themselves in the show - set about recruiting new members with the help of a lapel badge showing "a bird being sloshed over the nut with a spiked club".
At the inaugural meeting, Hancock announces plans for a pamphlet warning all males over the age of 14 against the evils of women. "The pamphlets will be illustrated with pictures of all the types of women a man can expect to come into contact with, and illustrations on how best to deal with 'em," he announces. "Plus an invaluable section on how to hit 'em without the bruises showing."
It's clear from the studio audience's laughter that women watching the recording found these exchanges just as funny as the men. Audiences of that era found it easier to shrug off such gags than we do in our own politically-correct times, and would have thought us ridiculous to worry that they encouraged violence against women in real life.
"I suppose that people from 1957, looking at the subjects for humour now, would be quite amazed at the things that are accepted and tolerated," Hiley says. "Maybe tastes will change again."