Dani Garavelli: Censorship past a joke

Published on Saturday 5 December 2009 18:52

THE author EB White once said: "Analysing humour is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it." It's a lesson the BBC would do well to learn. In the past few months its committee for editorial standards has stripped a number of controversial jokes of their original context, scrutinised them for any hint of offence and then ruled on whether or not they were suitable for public consumption.

By then, of course, it is impossible to remember whether or not they were funny when first delivered as part of a larger act when they were actually topical.

Last week it was comedian Jo Brand's turn to have the life sucked out of a passing quip by the corporation's humour police. In an edition of QI broadcast a few days after Carol Thatcher had been sacked from the One Show for using the word "golliwog", Brand said of Carol's mother, Margaret: "It was great actually when she became Lady Thatcher, because then she sounded like a device for removing pubic hair – you couldn't take her seriously after that."

A viewer complained, and so the committee members met for an earnest debate on the double entendre – is it sexist? is it too lewd? is it disrespectful to the memory of the great leader? – thus affording us a vision of 21st century Britain so surreal it is more entertaining than the joke itself.

To be fair on the Beeb what else can it do when so many licence fee-payers seem to believe their raison d'tre is to take umbrage on behalf of other people? If it just ignored the rising tide of complaints about edgy humour it would be accused of treating the public with contempt. So it panders to this band of professional whingers, even though it knows they are part of a small, but vocal minority with a particular axe to grind.

The phenomenon began, of course, with the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross affair, when a group of people for whom moral outrage is a way of life pushed a tasteless phone call on an obscure radio programme to the top of the news agenda, leading to Brand's resignation and a suspension for Ross.

And it reached its zenith when Jimmy Carr was forced to apologise for a joke at the Manchester Apollo about how the number of servicemen amputees returning from Iraq and Afghanistan would allow Britain to field a ******* good Paralympic team – although the majority of the complainants were not injured soldiers but self-appointed moral guardians and – spot the irony here – the very politicians responsible for sending young men to war without adequate protection in the first place.

One of the few comics to have been censured by the BBC is Frankie Boyle, who said Olympic gold medallist Rebecca Adlington had a face like someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon. Now I don't think calling someone ugly, even in a mildly inventive way, is a proper joke. Cruelty is an intrinsic part of most stand-up routines, but it should be used to expose the ridiculous or the hypocritical, not merely to deliver a playground-style taunt to someone you find physically unattractive. Boyle has left Mock The Week now, and I won't miss him. But there's a real danger that, if we try to regulate comedy as if it were a military training exercise rather than an anarchic art form, we are going to strip it of its power.

From Bill Hicks to Jerry Sadowitz, comedy is supposed to be subversive, and we all know the funniest jokes are the ones we feel we shouldn't really be laughing at. But already – many comics say – the climate of fear at the BBC is leading to contentious material being edited out.

And where will all this lead? One minute the editorial standards committee will be wringing its hands over a joke about the age of the Queen's vagina – Boyle again – and the next we will have po-faced jobsworths censoring the jokes in Christmas crackers. Oh, wait a minute, that's already happened, because earlier this month Britain's biggest cracker-making firm, Swantex, admitted it was axing all wisecracks involving mother-in-laws, sexuality and animal cruelty. One of the jokes was this harmless if tired offering. Q: What's green and turns red at the touch of a button. A: A frog in a liquidiser.

On a more sinister note, Jo Brand recently found herself the focus of a police investigation after the BNP complained that a joke she made at their expense constituted incitement to commit racial harassment. Imagine, the police having to give up valuable time to investigate a one-liner in which she implied that now she knew their addresses – she might send members excrement through the post. And if the BNP isn't a legitimate target for satire then what on earth is?

But this fad for censorship is spreading to the most unlikely of places. Last week, Dawn French – of all people – called for an end to fat jokes. Yes, that's right, the woman who has made an entire career out of sending up her figure, whose most memorable moment was probably dancing in a tutu opposite Darcey Bussell, wants to make weight a taboo subject.

But if you banned all jokes with the potential to offend what would you be left with? Michael McIntyre, that's what. Now there's a man that's captured the zeitgeist. Recently dubbed a comedian for the Cameron age, he has cornered the market in the kind of humour unlikely ever to land the Beeb in hot water. But while I can see the floppy-haired man of the moment is funny in small doses, too much of his anodyne, observational, mainstream humour would have me screaming out for something a little more caustic and challenging. You never know, it might even make me appreciate the likes of Frankie Boyle.