Colonel Blimp
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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 on some issue of current affairs.
His phrasing often includes direct contradiction, as though the first part of a sentence of his did not know what it was leading to, with the conclusion being part of an emotional catchphrase.
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."
George Orwell made an especially extensive use of the term "blimps" in his articles, with exactly the above meaning in mind. ("The Home Guard is (...) an astonishing phenomenon, a sort of People's Army officered by Blimps" - from "Partisan Review", April 15, 1941.)
A more sympathetic version of Blimp appeared in the classic British film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which nonetheless begins with Blimp in the steam room.
The character has survived in the form of a clichéd phrase - that highly conservative opinions, especially those expressed in news organs like the Daily Mail, are characterised as 'Colonel Blimp' statements.
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