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"The quartet of Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller created a boom in satirical comedy with Beyond the Fringe, played thousands of shows on both sides of the Atlantic, and enjoyed huge solo success."
—The Telegraph, “The day that sparked the satire boom”.[1]
The satire boom was the output of a generation of British satirical writers, journalists and performers at the beginning of the 1960s. The satire boom is often regarded as having begun with the first performance of Beyond the Fringe on 22 August 1960 and ending around December 1963 with the cancellation of the BBC TV show That Was The Week That Was. The figures most closely identified with the satire boom are Peter Cook, John Bird, John Fortune, David Frost, Dudley Moore, Bernard Levin and Richard Ingrams. Many figures who found celebrity through the satire boom went on to establish subsequently more serious careers as writers including Alan Bennett (drama), Jonathan Miller (polymathic), and Paul Foot (investigative journalism).
In his book The Neophiliacs, Christopher Booker, who as a founding editor of Private Eye was a central figure of the satire boom, charts the years 1959 to 1964. He begins with the Cambridge Footlights student revue The Last Laugh written by Bird and Cook; it later transferred to the West End. Booker ends the period with the cancellation of the television series That Was The Week That Was, and the closing of the Establishment Club.
"The 1960s satire boom opened up the way for a fresh, inventive generation of young comedy writer-performers to flourish on TV and to take comedy in a new and exciting direction."
—BBC profile for Monty Python's Flying Circus.[2]
The boom was driven by well-connected graduates from first the University of Cambridge, and then the University of Oxford.[3] BT states, "The ground-breaking revue Beyond the Fringe, starring Oxbridge graduates Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore, opened at the Fortune Theatre, London in 1961 – and started something of a revolution in humour."[3] Booker argues that, with the response to the Suez Crisis which effectively marked the end of the British Empire as a great power, an upper middle class generation with public school and Oxbridge educations who had grown up with certain expectations—of following a career in colonial administration or the civil service—suddenly found themselves surplus. Peter Cook had already entered for a Foreign Office entrance exam, before his stage career took off. At the same time the emergence of the "angry young men" and "kitchen sink realism" in drama were signs that British culture was increasingly dominated by the concerns of the "common man". The Labour Party was proving to be an ineffective opposition to a patrician Conservative government. The satire-boom generation were in general apolitical or had (at that time) left-of-centre tendencies.
1960s portal
^"The day that sparked the satire boom". The Telegraph. Retrieved 25 September 2019.
^"Monty Python's Flying Circus". BBC. Retrieved 24 August 2019.
^ ab"May 10, 1961: Bennett, Cook, Miller and Moore launch satire boom with Beyond the Fringe". BT. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
huge solo success." —The Telegraph, “The day that sparked the satireboom”. The satireboom was the output of a generation of British satirical writers...
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Political satire is a type of satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics. Political satire can also act as a tool for advancing political...
in a wealth of puns and background jokes. With Private Eye riding the satireboom, Peter Cook soon took an interest and contributed two serials recounting...
need rain. News satire has been prevalent on television since the 1960s, when it enjoyed a renaissance in the UK with the "SatireBoom", led by comedians...
playwright and screenwriter. He was the leading figure of the British satireboom of the 1960s, and he was associated with the anti-establishment comedic...
British satireboom of the 1960s. He was one of the four writer-performers in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe from 1960 that created a boom in satiric...
host, journalist, comedian and writer. He rose to prominence during the satireboom in the United Kingdom when he was chosen to host the satirical programme...
early 1960s. Hugely successful, it is widely regarded as seminal to the "satireboom", the rise of satirical comedy in 1960s Britain. The idea for Beyond...
David Frost. The programme is considered a significant element of the satireboom in the UK in the early 1960s, as it broke ground in comedy by lampooning...
Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett, major figures of the 1960s British satireboom, and then Monty Python. Atkinson states, "I remember watching them avidly...
Actor for I'm All Right Jack (1959). A leading figure of the British satireboom of the 1960s, Peter Cook delivered deadpan monologues in his double act...
Fringe—seminal to the British "satireboom"—and had worked on Frost, which was similar in style. "The 1960s satireboom opened up the way for a fresh,...
groups such as Monty Python and The Goodies, and generally fuelling the satireboom. During the 1980s, Footlights reinforced its position at the heart of...
involvement in satire – humorous social criticism. They are grouped by era and listed by year of birth. Included is a list of modern satires. Aesop (c. 620–560...
published posthumously. He wrote histories of BBC Radio 3, the British satireboom of the 1960s, Angry Young Men: A Literary Comedy of the 1950s (2002)...
producer. He established himself as a central player in the British satireboom of the early 1960s, as co-producer, with Donald Albery, of Beyond the...
television events ever in the UK. Satire has been a prominent feature in British comedy for centuries. The British satireboom of the 1960s, which consisted...
Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller; the show catalyzed Britain's satireboom in the early 1960s. In early 1963, he produced the accompanying soundtrack...
(2002). That Was Satire That Was. Phoenix. ISBN 0-7538-1393-9. Carpenter, Humphrey. (2003) A great, silly grin: The British satireboom of the 1960s (Da...
Discs in 2008, of the "old boy network". Private Eye was part of the satireboom of the early 1960s, which included the television show That Was The Week...
Independent. Retrieved 26 January 2021. Humphrey Carpenter That Was Satire That Was: The SatireBoom in the 1960s, London, 2000, p. 232 John R. Cook Dennis Potter:...
July 2012. Carpenter, Humphrey (2000). A Great, Silly Grin: The British SatireBoom of the 1960s. New York: PublicAffairs. p. 194. ISBN 978-1-58648-081-3...
opening editorial, 1919 Carpenter, Humphrey (2000). That Was Satire That Was: The SatireBoom of the Sixties. London: Victor Gollancz. p. 13. Kellaway, Kate...
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