Image of the English intellectual
"The Archbishop of Canterbury, while a self-confessed fan of Father Ted and the Muppet Christmas Carol, is one of Britain's foremost public intellectuals and an authority on the author of The Brothers Karamazov, The Devils and The Idiot."
For some reason, an intellectual is not supposed to enjoy Father Ted or the Muppets. I suppose my own liking for Carry On... movies, the work of The Two Ronnies and the Roadrunner cartoons disqualifies me also... yet, if they said he enjoys fine wine or the best Havana cigars, perhaps this would not trouble the definition of an intellectual, but rather reinforce it, how so...
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Secondly, the idea that Father Ted is somehow anti-intellecutal or that intellectuals have no sense of humour, there is a rich seam here to mine. I just went and had a coffee and considered the English notion of an intellectual, and the character type that jumped out at me was that it is an image centred on the monk - that it involves sacrifice of sensuality, a constant seriousness, the riding of penny farthing bicycles (this is a joke), perhaps a despising of worldly things (with the exception of the aforementioned bicycles), etc.
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A good book idea would be a study of how the English image of the intellectual was formed, how it has developed and of how it is maintained.
Okay, who is going to confess to their favoured 'non-intellectual' pleasures. Or would somebody advance the idea that for an intellectual, all pleasures are necessarily intellectual...