Stirling Moss is currently a survivor from the time now under consideration. His Wikipedia entry tells me that he was ‘active’ between 1951 and 1961. This cartoon therefore represents him at the height of his fame. I also see that in 1960 he was badly injured while competing in the Belgian Grand Prix.
Here’s a quotation:
In the New Year Honours 2000 List, Moss was made a Knight Bachelor for services to Motor Racing. On 21 March 2000, he was knighted by Prince Charles, standing in for the Queen who was on an official visit to Australia. As Moss drove his Mercedes away from Buckingham Palace after the ceremony, he was stopped by a palace guard who joked: “Who do you think you are? Stirling Moss?” Moss smiled and replied "Sir Stirling Moss, actually.”
A mood of cynicism has caused this cartoon to be drawn. CND was very fashionable at the time and marching to Aldermaston in protest against nuclear weapons was extremely popular with all ages but especially the young.
I assume that this kind of ‘entertainment’ was then being laid on at the Zoo. Entering into that spirit the cartoonist imagines the monkeys even thinking and talking like the human beings that they were pretending to be.
Most of us have memories of crude and total ineffective attempts by some teachers to browbeat their pupils. We also remember the good teachers who had no need to employ such pointless methods.
Marching to Aldermaston was all the rage at the time. Counter intuitively the delegate was totally won over by the American Base Commander and doesn’t mind flaunting his haul of cigars.
The point of this joke is that this scenario could never have taken place. CND and the American military could never have seen eye to eye during the Cold War.
PS. I probably need to explain that CND was the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmanent.
Of course parrots don’t provide real conversation. They were popular as a way of making lonely people less isolated. Television, in spite of its imperfections, does a better job of it.
It appears that in 1960 some Oxbridge students still enjoyed the dangerous sport of climbing over ancient buildings – the older the better. It is something that seems to belong more to the inter war period. I don’t think that it featured in Brideshead Revisited but it would have fitted in quite well.
This joke profits from an ambiguity in the notice. There was another joke, much more widespread at the time, in which underground passengers, who don’t have a dog with them, wonder whether they may use the escalator because of a notice which states ‘Dogs Must be Carried.’
