Que? Daily Mail marks death of beloved refugee comic with attack on migrants
Hypocrisy? We know nothing!
When an eight-year old Andrew Sachs fled Germany with his family in 1938, the then-editor of the Daily Mail was congratulating ‘Adolf the Great’ on his invasion of the Sudetnland.
Seventy-eight years later, Andrew Sachs — most famous for his portrayal of Manuel in Fawlty Towers — has died a national treasure. The Daily Mail remains a xenophobic rag.
It seems no one on staff saw the irony of mourning a European migrant on one panel, while fostering resentment and hatred on another.
Well, they probably did recognise the irony, but didn’t care.
However, while it has no concern for real-life migrants and refugees from any country, the Mail obituary did demonstrate a touching concern for the fictional Manuel, an unskilled European worker horribly mistreated by an exploitative boss, Basil Fawlty.
They were particularly troubled by Fawlty’s ‘xenophobic catchphrase’ — ‘you’ll have to excuse him, he’s from Barcelona’.
We didn’t think the Daily Mail knew the word xenophobic. Now that they’ve learned it, perhaps they could think about some of its more serious manifestations.
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