It was generic Northern English, which usually means Lancashire or Yorkshire.
Hello jobseekers!
Liked the 1st and 2nd but the 3rd series wasn’t all that enjoyable. Maybe the time away has done the series good. Looking forward to these.
Also insular subdivision/gated community with an HOA.
People are like pens - if they don’t work, shake them. If they still don’t work, bin 'em!
I gotta admit even though I didn’t know that particular racist construct existed, I’m pretty annoyed that it does still exist and only continues to exist at White folks’ discretion.
I think that the UK must have a completely different conception of blackface than the US. I was shocked to see it in Fry and Laurie’s Jeeves and Wooster. Not really all that shocked to see in Little Britain.
The guy trying to tell the joke in the restaurant with the pistol was a stand out moment for me.
I always assumed it was somewhere in the Pennines, however, logically, it should be Grangetown a suburb of Middlesbrough, as that is the birth place of professionally offensive “comedian” Roy “Chubby” Brown; better known to his parents as Royston Vasey. He is also Mayor Larry Vaughn in League of Gentlemen.
That’s the stereotype, though it was filmed in Derbyshire and based on Alston, Cumbria, apparently.
And as @euansmith said, the real Royton Vasey (person) is from Middlesbrough, so that covers the North East, too. 
The real Alston isn’t that bad, to be honest. Carlisle, on the other hand…
Not entirely, I guess most of us are uncomfortable about it. But, compared to the US, for very different reasons. The people who exploited colonies were our upper classes - not ordinary British people. British experience of black entertainers really began with jazz in the 1920s - and jazz musicians were highly paid. Programming that made use of black stereotypes was supposed to be “American”.
I think that “black face” goes back rather further than the 1920s in British popular culture.
But the experience is certainly different over here. I’m glad that people still find Black Face transgressive. It was always supposed to be; even back when the make up was supposed to represent “Moors”, “Saracens” or bogeymen.
Without context, I don’t understand the picture. Perhaps you could explain it.
In English Folk Dancing and things like Mummers Plays (some of which date back to the Middle Ages, and some are probably a product of Victorian Medievalomania) frequently have black faced characters, In the plays, they are generally “Moors” or “Saracens” who are slain or converted to Christianity by St George.
In the dancing, they are a bit more complicated. Some are “Moors” again as the dances can include some degree of narrative. They can also be bogeymen, tricksters or just a “disguise” to allow the participants to step outside of societal norms.
From what I understand, Morris Dancing (the slightly more genteel form of English Folk Dancing) tends to have less Black Face than the rather more transgressive Molly Dancing.
I think you read something into my original post that wasn’t there. The point I was making was that we had no tradition of black slaves being expected to entertain white masters, and so blackface has a completely different significance. Nowhere did I suggest it wasn’t an old tradition. Black slavery was something that happened mostly a long way from the experience of British people.
In fact racism per se is a fairly recent innovation, I believe, which is why most of the population of Bristol with any long term roots there have a percentage of Afro-Caribbean inheritance which would make them “black” in some Southern US States. (Around 1/16). The history of WW2 in England is significant in this regard - black American troops found very little prejudice from white people and this caused a lot of unrest, along with fears from white US officers that black soldiers would not longer put up with discrimination when they went home.
Unfortunately, we have now developed out own significant population of anti-Semites and all out racists.
Getty Images captions it so:
The black faced Morrismen of the Britannia Coconutters, dance boundary to boundary in Bacup, on April 7, 2007 in Lancashire, northern England. Every Easter Saturday for over a hundred years the men have performed pagan dances to welcome Spring and ward off evil Winter spirits. The Coconutters derive their name from the time when coal miners would wear coconut shells on their knees for protection in the pits. Their blackened faces are to disguise them from evil spirits after the dance has finished and also reflects the coal mining traditions.
Coconut Knee Pads? Cool!
