A recently resurfaced clip from the Big Fat Quiz Of The Year 2008 has the Spectator’s Gareth Roberts eye-rolling at the speed with which mainstream comedians can switch sides on political issues to remain aligned with fashionable orthodoxy. Here’s an excerpt:
Personally I find TV panel shows pretty unbearable. They’re like being at a student party full of lairy smartarses you don’t know, and probably wouldn’t want to. But now a clip from one has, in the journalistic parlance of our time, ‘resurfaced on social media’. It is never a good thing for the people involved when a clip resurfaces on social media. It’s the kind of resurfacing that Jaws did in his heyday.
This particular eruption from the deep comes from the Big Fat Quiz Of The Year 2008, the fourth edition of the annual Channel Four institution. (Its twentieth anniversary edition is due this December. It’s still going because of course it is – long running TV brands used to be like hens’ teeth, but now they linger on and on. The Big Fat Quiz will always be with us, like the poor or herpes or Ken Barlow.) Jimmy Carr is the host, and the three teams consist of a variety of comedians and presenters: Michael McIntyre and Claudia Winkleman, Sean Lock and James Corden, and Dara Ó Briain and Davina McCall. …
The question is about a man who “announced he was going to have a baby – but what was unusual about the whole affair?” Ó Briain is first up, saying that he and McCall’s answer is that this person “was a pregnant male transsexual, it was him having the baby”. You might almost think Ó Briain would get away from this clip unscathed, but stay tuned.
Next is Lock and Corden, and up the balloon goes. “We wrote: It was an abomination” Lock deadpans, to an outburst of laughter from all sides and the studio audience. Ó Briain adds, “Our team will accept that answer as being the same as ours, that’s fine.” Corden, giggling, next, “You said what was different about it, and we’ve decided it was an abomination, and we’re sticking by it.” Finally, over to McIntyre and Winkleman, pulling amused, confused faces; “He is a woman / she is a man… he had a baby, but he is a bloke, with a womb?” “A womb-man” ventures Carr, before cracking jokes about portmanteau words for transsexual genitalia that I can’t repeat here. …
What’s astonishing about this clip is that it’s proof that these people knew exactly what a woman was about five cultural minutes ago, and found the idea of pretending not to know hilarious. …
At times in the last 10 years, I have felt like I am going mad. People I knew or worked with in this milieu, who were far more un-PC than me, suddenly changed lanes, leaving me where I’d always been but somehow a pariah. Ironically, I was mocked in the noughties by colleagues for being a bit humourless about identity-based banter that I considered ‘nasty’ and bad form.
Now some might point out that times have changed. Oh indeed they have, and don’t we know it. But there are still two sexes, and no man can get pregnant. It is ludicrous to pretend otherwise, and ludicrous ideas are funny.
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10navigator
2 years ago
Type in ‘Sean Lock Eight out of ten cats does countdown, Rachel Riley’. Utterly hilarious, filthy and outrageaous in equal measure. Sean Lock was a comic genius.
Do not click on Dory Oh Brian’s twitter unless you’re ready to read some of the most stupid things ever written by man. Absolute king-knob of the virtue signalling blob.
Comedy is the modern ersatz for culture. It’s basic principle is to supplant continuous movement in circles for substance and it’s implict message is Nothing matters because everything can be ridiculed. Keep laughing, otherwise, you might start thinking and that’s soo boring!
Not everything can be ridiculed though – mock any unfunny lezzer (Hannah Gadsby and Rosie Jones are two good examples) and watch most social meeja come down like a censorious ton of bricks
Hannah Gadsby (born 1978) is an Australian comedian, writer, and actor. They began their career in Australia after winning the national final of the Raw Comedy competition for new comedians in 2006.
[Wikipedia]
Both Hannah and Gadsby, I presume. Do they sometimes fight over control of the single body they’re apparently sharing?
Apart from that, I was trying to make a technical point: Everything is open (or perhaps vulnerable) to ridicule by professional ridiculers. The people who were making jokes about womb-man in 2008 are nowadays probably making very similar jokes about transphobes. I didn’t mean to say that the establishment believes it would be culturally ok to ridicule everything, only whatever they disapprove of today.
The reason I’m ‘far right’ is that these type of people are ‘far left’.
When someone moves so far left most folk are far right, and I’m most definitely, proudly, unashamedly to their far right.
It’s a relative term, like east and west.
In modern usage, these terms are simply meaningless labels supposed to signal relative approval or disapproval. People calling themselves left use right when they mean to say “I disapprove of that” and left for “I approve of that”, people calling themselves right do it the other way round. The disapproval direction may be qualified with far or extreme to make it “I strongly disapprove of that!”.
In historical usage after the French revolution where left meant repulicans and right monarchists, this being derived from the sitting order in the revolutionary French national assembly, left converges towards internationalism based on the idea of the universal equality of all people and right converges towards nationalism and valueing individuals for their unique qualities (or condemning them for the lack thereof).
In a completely unconfrontational but curious way, I have to ask for an example or two of the non-change to which you refer. I myself definitely held vaguely leftie views as a student (on some things but certainly not all), which I’ve abandoned over the years as reality has acted on me; but I have changed. Is there anything you can put your finger on, as an example of your not having changed, or is “substantially” the key word here?
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Type in ‘Sean Lock Eight out of ten cats does countdown, Rachel Riley’. Utterly hilarious, filthy and outrageaous in equal measure. Sean Lock was a comic genius.
I suspect that he got more outrageous when he knew that he wasn’t going to live to be an old man.
That said – he was, I suspect, always on the edge of being cancelled.
It was funny in 2008, it’s funny now ….this thread has been running on the Spectator for a few days.
It’s agreed that Doris O’Brien is a hypocrite.
…ah bless…it’s the new way isn’t it…if you don’t like my beliefs and convictions today…. don’t worry I have plenty more that might suit the occasion!!
Do not click on Dory Oh Brian’s twitter unless you’re ready to read some of the most stupid things ever written by man. Absolute king-knob of the virtue signalling blob.
What a fuckwit he is.
He’s far better on programmes about astronomy, provided you can suspend your knowledge of his other personas.
Dory Oh Brian is a prick, always was, always will be.
Once a prick, always a prick.
Comedy is the modern ersatz for culture. It’s basic principle is to supplant continuous movement in circles for substance and it’s implict message is Nothing matters because everything can be ridiculed. Keep laughing, otherwise, you might start thinking and that’s soo boring!
Not everything can be ridiculed though – mock any unfunny lezzer (Hannah Gadsby and Rosie Jones are two good examples) and watch most social meeja come down like a censorious ton of bricks
Hannah Gadsby (born 1978) is an Australian comedian, writer, and actor. They began their career in Australia after winning the national final of the Raw Comedy competition for new comedians in 2006.
[Wikipedia]
Both Hannah and Gadsby, I presume. Do they sometimes fight over control of the single body they’re apparently sharing?
Apart from that, I was trying to make a technical point: Everything is open (or perhaps vulnerable) to ridicule by professional ridiculers. The people who were making jokes about womb-man in 2008 are nowadays probably making very similar jokes about transphobes. I didn’t mean to say that the establishment believes it would be culturally ok to ridicule everything, only whatever they disapprove of today.
So now we all know what a cultural revolution looks like.
It is driven by terror and makes people do things they don’t really want to do out of fear.
The courageous stand up and get devoured. The “smart” ones play along and will flip back if the wind changes direction again.
Like with lockdowns, covid jabs and vax passports. Against, then for, then against again.
The only silver lining is that we get to find out who people really are.
The reason I’m ‘far right’ is that these type of people are ‘far left’.
When someone moves so far left most folk are far right, and I’m most definitely, proudly, unashamedly to their far right.
It’s a relative term, like east and west.
In 40 years I have gone from centre left to far right without substantially changing my position on anything.
My first GE was 1979, and I’ve always been on the political right – by now I probably make Hitler look moderate.
I believe, with respect, Hitler was actually far left.
In modern usage, these terms are simply meaningless labels supposed to signal relative approval or disapproval. People calling themselves left use right when they mean to say “I disapprove of that” and left for “I approve of that”, people calling themselves right do it the other way round. The disapproval direction may be qualified with far or extreme to make it “I strongly disapprove of that!”.
In historical usage after the French revolution where left meant repulicans and right monarchists, this being derived from the sitting order in the revolutionary French national assembly, left converges towards internationalism based on the idea of the universal equality of all people and right converges towards nationalism and valueing individuals for their unique qualities (or condemning them for the lack thereof).
Not if you listen to the woke.
In a completely unconfrontational but curious way, I have to ask for an example or two of the non-change to which you refer. I myself definitely held vaguely leftie views as a student (on some things but certainly not all), which I’ve abandoned over the years as reality has acted on me; but I have changed. Is there anything you can put your finger on, as an example of your not having changed, or is “substantially” the key word here?
Me and many others too 👍
I’ve just discovered that I have a copy on an old back-up hard drive
Groucho knew:
“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”