Alf Garnett - Definition

Alf Garnett was the (fictional) racially bigoted and misogynistic linchpin of the BBC television sitcom Til Death Us Do Part, and was played masterfully throughout the series and its sequel series In Sickness and in Health by actor Warren Mitchell. Writer Johnny Speight has described Alf as a character with absolutely no redeeming features. He is cowardly, mean-spirited, racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic (despite evidence that he has Jewish blood), and blames all of his problems on everybody else. Garnett is regularly ridiculed for his illogical views by many of the other characters in the series and also by his own rants and schemes which reveal his hypocrisy.

The British public love Alf Garnett, although Warren Mitchell has often commented that not all viewers saw the satire in the character. Alf was the direct inspiration for Archie Bunker in the American remake of Till Death Do Us Part, All in the Family. The South Park character Eric Cartman is also indirectly descended from the grotesques exemplified by Garnett.

It is probably not a complete coincidence that Warren Mitchell as Alf Garnett looks exactly like Rudyard Kipling. Both Speight and Kipling have had their work misread by critics who do not necessarily understand its context.