Humour

Two clips from the Benny Hill Show (play only if you are not PC)

Humour has been banned by the PC brigade. Which is a particular blow for me personally as for as long as I can remember I have reveled in it. As a child I read comics, watched Morecombe & Wise and Benny Hill and often cried with laughter. My Father was always larking about and a general theme of good natured humour ran throughout the family. Laughter is the best medicine and I grew up a happy child.

The 1970's and 1980's produced some wonderful comedy. Fawlty Towers, Only Fools & Horses, Black Adder etc (the last of these co-written by Ben Elton). In the late 1980's Ben Elton appeared on a great late night show called Friday Night Live. Now Ben is a wonderful comedian and writer and he has his own 'motor mouth' style of delivery and an absolutely foul mouth. I suddenly noticed he was doing one of his 'rants' about 'sexism' and it was obvious he was taking a thinly disguised swipe at poor old Benny Hill. This was often repeated by him in subsequent shows and was taken up by others. That was my first experience of 'Political Correctness' applied to humour!

Why did he do this? According to him of course, he didn't. Now the Benny Hill Show was one of the best selling shows ever and was sold and seen all over the world making millions for Thames TV. In 1989 Benny had a triumphant Cannes TV festival and yet when he returned and went to renew his contract with Thames TV he was told that he was sacked. Why? You work it out! Thanks Ben. Benny never recovered and died in April 1992 only months after receiving the Charlie Chaplin Award for International Comedy and while Thames TV was still making millions from his show. Was Benny Hill the PC brigade's first scalp?

As the 1990s progressed and the PC brigade became ever more vociferous, comedians seemed to take note and scrubbed out most of the usual subject matter, humour took a dive and has never recovered. Visit a comedy club these days and you may feel like asking for your money back and suing them under the Trades Description Act if they refuse. Compare that to a traditional comedian that would have you falling out of your seat.

Now imagine a team of comedians making a series about the stereotype Asian society! The clingy Mother, everyone living in the same house and working in the family business, girls being second class citizens and having arranged marriages - wow the steam would be coming out of the PC brigade's ears - but what a funny series that would be. Luckily we got the series - it was called 'Goodness Gracious Me' - but why no outcry about it? Because it was done by a Asian Team! So is it OK to listen to jokes about the idiosyncrasies of other races when those races make the jokes themselves?

Now we read that the BBC is under pressure to censor old comedies in line with the PC brigade's newspeak. Following ONE complaint, the BBC has agreed to remove the word 'PAKI' from a 23 year old episode of 'Only Fools and Horses'. This policy of censorship (which the BBC say they will follow before retransmission of all programs) will lead to bleeps or silences in most of our old and cherished comedies. Some scenes may need to be cut completely. (The Major in Fawlty Towers explaining the difference between 'Niggers' and 'Wogs' springs to mind).

Why on earth should we decimate our comedy heritage just to satisfy the Thought Police of The PC Brigade? It again smacks of the rewriting of history that takes place in all oppressive and totalitarian societies. I thought we were supposed to be a free society with free speech. Some hopes! There has been widespread outcry in the past about some of the output from the BBC and they have totally ignored it - yet one complaint from the PC Brigade and they rush around like frightened chickens. This is just PC madness!

We can't make jokes about fat people - why? Peer pressure has always played a part in shaping our society so why not our people? It sounds cruel but perhaps fat people wouldn't be so fat and unhealthy if they had their blubber constantly drawn to their attention. Why can't we tell the truth anymore? They are NOT horizontally challenged and it isn't water retention. Cake retention perhaps! (thanks to Jo Brand for that one)

Now the British have a history of what we call sick jokes. There is no malice in these - no harm is meant to anyone - it is just the British sense of humour where no subject is taboo and also the British way of dealing with tragedy. I first noticed this in my schooldays when the Aberfan disaster happened and then later the Biafran famine. These jokes are certainly in bad taste but they are just jokes - no harm is done. The most recent exponent of these sick jokes - Ann Winterton - is dealt with elsewhere on this site.

Firemen, who do an absolutely wonderful job in our community, are renowned for their sick humour. These men and women see the horrors that no one should have to see. For example, they collect the bodies from suicides on the railways where people rush out at the last moment and lay their necks on the line when the train has no chance of stopping. I saw a TV documentary where a fireman was describing the sick humour that abounds. They collected the head and body of one such suicide, put them on a stretcher and carried it up the railway embankment. The embankment was quite steep and of course the head rolled off and bounced back down to the track. He said all four firemen turned and said with one voice "Come on mate - don't lose your head!" It was just humour and a way of dealing with tragedy and it does no harm to anyone (but very much non-PC!)

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