Tom Lehrer, who has died aged 97, wrote and performed such subversive ditties as Poisoning Pigeons in the Park and The Masochism Tango, and was a sensation during the satire boom of the 1950s.

There never was a time like the 1950s — not even during the 1950s. Not if you have in mind the decade of conformity, of moms in pearls and churchgoing families, of patriotic youth and apple pies cooling on the sills of tidy new suburban homes.