80's COMEDY CLASSIC: Stavros (Harry Enfield) the Kebab Shop owner, is very ill. I am suprised that this isn't already on RU-vid. From ben Elton's "Friday Night Live".
I actually knew the real character who Stavros was based upon. He had a small Kebab shop on Mare Street in Hackney, and spoke that strange mixture of Cockney & Greek. This was around 1979. Paul Whitehouse worked at Hackney Council just up the road, not far from the shop. Strange but True.
The same things have been said about it longer than I've been alive (48) so why people keep believing the bullshit that it's underfunded. It's piss poorly run by the bureaucrats and always has been. Too many vested interests with their own little empires milking it and deliberately stopping it from working
I got called a stavros today by my mixed race girlfriend (I'm cypriot), I didn't really know what it meant until I watched this, It's funny but in an inexplicable way I also found it offensive.
It's offensive because British Greek Cypriots have lived with erasure, and are objects of fun and stereotypes. They have faced lots of challenges since the 1950's when many came to the UK, but are seen (along with British Greeks, as feckless, 'hot-blooded' or duplicitous depending on gender and age).
