THE war on comedy has claimed another couple of victims in the past week or so. Quip merchant Jimmy Carr was blasted out of the water by some members of the vast army of folk who comb the media looking for something to get offended by on behalf of people who are the targets of the alleged offence and who are not bothered enough by it to stand up for themselves.
During his stand-up act in front of an audience of British soldiers, Carr commented: “Say what you like about the servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a good team at the next Paralympics.”
His audience responded with appreciative laughter at what they considered a very funny jest, but it wasn’t long before the complaints came pouring in from folk who took the opportunity to be offended on the soldiers’ behalf.
The mother of one injured squaddie, exhibiting a somewhat bizarre train of thought, went as far as to say: “Soldiers are over there fighting for freedom of speech. Carr needs to remember that, when he says things like this.”
She seems to be saying that, while our young men and women are fighting and dying so that Johnny Foreigner can say what he likes, back at home, our comedians should be gagged, and prevented from saying anything that might offend anyone anywhere.
A good comedian knows his audience and Carr was quite confident that the packed house of military personnel would find nothing offensive in his gag, and why should they? He wasn’t making fun out of people who have lost limbs in battle. If anything, he was reminding them that there are still avenues that they can explore in the world of competitive sport, if that’s what takes their fancy.
So he meant no offence and none was taken by those most closely involved. Yet again, it was left to the busybodies with nothing better to do than to voice their displeasure at his material.
Being funny has generally depended on picking on one minority or another. I grew up on a diet of those Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman jokes in which the Irishman always turned out to be the eejit.
As an Irishman myself, I wasn’t even remotely offended by those gags.
It was only when I told one of these jokes to a group of people I was working with in London that an Irish woman rounded on me and told me I should be ashamed of myself for promulgating the widely-held belief that the Irish were a nation of thickos.
I haven’t told a Paddy the Irishman joke since.
The second person to fall foul of this politically-correct nonsense in recent days is Scotland’s own former newspaper editor and present-day TV presenter Andrew Neil, who got himself into hot water on his Thursday-night show, This Week, over an innocuous gag regarding biscuits.
In case you are the early-to-bed type and have never stayed up long enough to catch the show, it consists of Andrew and his two chums, Diane Abbott, a Labour MP who, in police parlance, would be described as IC3, if I remember The Bill correctly, and former Tory MP Michael Portillo who, despite the Spanish surname, is lily-white.
Abbott and Portillo are there largely to act as foils for Andrew Neil’s brand of wit, which falls somewhere between the razor-sharp and blunt-axe categories.
On this occasion, after joking about Gordon Brown’s inability to name his favourite biscuit, the garrulous Andrew went on to refer to Diane Abbott as a chocolate HobNob and to Portillo as a custard cream.
His captive audience of two did a little eye-rolling and sniggering, but didn’t show any signs of being offended, and the show continued on its merry way.
However, that segment was pulled with indecent haste from the BBC’s iPlayer service when they received 15 complaints from outraged viewers who claimed that Andrew was being racist.
Instead of telling the 15 numpties who phoned in to go and get a life, a BBC spokesman issued the following statement: “Andrew’s introduction chose two well-known biscuits at random, yet a few viewers have expressed concern that it might be a reference to race. This was certainly not the case and the show would like to apologise for any inadvertent offence.”
How’s that for pandering to a bunch of paranoid halfwits? On top of which, it’s total nonsense. Of course Andrew chose a chocolate HobNob based on the colour of Abbott’s skin. There was nothing “random” about it. That was the joke.
OK, it wasn’t in the same league as Jimmy Carr’s material, but then Andrew Neil isn’t nearly half as funny as he thinks he is, as regular viewers of his show are all too painfully aware.
But, if Ms Abbott wasn’t offended by it, what business is it of anyone else to leap to her defence.
What a ball these headbangers would have had in the days of Alf Garnett and even Fawlty Towers, but, thanks to this spineless kowtowing to the PC brigade on the part of the nation’s broadcasters, we will never again see the likes of these TV classics.
Anyone approaching the programme makers nowadays with a script that had a large Englishman whacking a small Spaniard over the head every five minutes and slagging off the Germans would be given short shrift and a two-year sentence for spreading race hate.