Michael Barrymore, in blackface, impersonates John Barnes before the 1984 FA Cup final

Someone else can do the bottle opener gag.

Yeah okay, I get why the image itself fits in with a lot of racially stereotypical stuff down the years, but as the Brits are saying, it's drawing attention (and paying AFFECTIONATE homage) to his somewhat exaggerated accent. Race didn't enter into ANY of our (British) considerations.

god I hate british people

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f312/Tonito44/ThatsRacist.gif

Second YouTube comment down.

Hey, I bet 3/4 of the Limeys who rang in to complain were griping about seeing a black person on their teevee

I dunno, standards in blackface had really declined by the 80s.

The Miner's Strike, innit

No wonder Jim Davidson was so livid.

John Barnes, who on 1988's "Anfield Rap" managed to rhyme "My name is John Barnes" with "the crowd goes 'bananas.'"

"Everybody's rappin' like it's a commercial / Acting like life is a Lucozade commercial"

"SuperCaleyGoBallisticCelticAreAtrocious"

"Isotonic means it fucks your libido up."

I suspect this is some years before Faith Brown - clad in a black body-stocking with a hole cut out for her mouth - appeared on GMTV (was it?) with Rusty Lee. Rusty's laughter never sounded so forced.

Good old YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WanOpp4Kvw

Hmmmm, yes, Faith Brown, how did she ever manage to have any kind of career?

jugs

God.

UK Independence Party campaigner Rustie Lee.

"the good old days" see also Starsky & Hutch "voodoo island" wtf

good god that clip

Barnes' accent sounds nothing like that, it's more of a scouse/jamaican mix. So Barrymore's impression is racist and crap.

Surely Barnes's accent is odder than that - scouse never really came into it, did it? He was a colonel's son, something of a conservative, affluent in the Jamaican context; he has that extraordinary clipped and fast way of talking. It is possible to an rough impression of this, actually, that has nothing to do with racism or stereotypical Jamaicans (as in L Henry 1985), but is just a reaction to the (charming?) oddity of Barnesy's voice.

All of which endorses your second point: Barrymore was extra-dumb and perplexingly idiotic in not registering any of this.

He did pick up a bit of a scouse twang at Liverpool, and he still lives in the north-west, I think.

With fellow former footballers Les Ferdinand and Luther Blissett, he has founded Team48 Motorsport, a team aiming to promote young racing drivers of Afro-Caribbean background. For 2008 they enter the British Touring Car Championship, running Alfa Romeos for white Jamaican Matthew Gore and 18-year-old black Briton Darelle Wilson.

Bump in celebration of Barnes' new job

Stand-up comics. You just come around to liking them and then they impersonate traffic wardens.

Rusty Lee and Faith Brown - the rematch.