Colonel Blimp
|
|
The cartoonist David Low first drew Colonel Blimp for Lord Beaverbrook's London Evening Standard in the 1930s: pompous, irascible, jingoistic and stereotypically English. "Gad, Sir", Blimp would proclaim, wrapped in his towel and brandishing some mundane weapon to emphasise his passion and complacency on some issue of current affairs.
Blimp was a satire on the reactionary opinions of the British establishment of the 1930s and 1940s. Low described him as "a symbol of stupidity, and stupid people are quite nice.”
A more sympathetic version of Blimp appeared in the classic British film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.
The character has survived in the form of a cliched phrase - that highly conservative opinions, especially those expressed in news organs like the Daily Mail, are characterised as 'Colonel Blimp' statements.