Hilarity

A horse walks into a bar and takes a seat. The bartender comes up to him and says “Why the long face?” The horse, who for the sake of making my point in a humorous manner, can talk. So he says, “Because I just watched the Fosters British Comedy Awards and frankly if that is what passes as humour these days I might just blow my equine brains out.”

The annual celebration all things supposedly hilarious on TV, was recently shown on Channel 4. It is a programme I always enjoyed because of its unpredictable nature, whether it was Spike Milligan calling Prince Charles a ‘grovelling little bastard’, Julian Clary claiming he had fisted the then Chancellor of the British Exchequer or the drunken antics of Vic Reeves or Johnny Vegas.

These days, unfortunately, it has been sanitised beyond recognition. Reflecting a world where television is churned out in order to keep the masses stupefied and numb, it has become a shell of it’s once slightly left of the norm, borderline edgy self, consistently rewarding and acknowledging comedic dross such as Harry Hill, Michael McIntyre, catchphrase shows like Little Britain or The Fast Show, Ant and Dec and Jo Brand.

When I first started watching comedy fifteen or twenty years ago, Jo Brand was an unfunny comedienne who made jokes about being overweight, menstruating, men being rubbish and eating cake. Two decades later, she no longer quips about her periods. She’s replaced that side splitter with the fact that she is old now.

This year’s big winner at the Comedy Awards was Miranda Hart. She won gongs for Best Female Actress, Peoples Choice and TV sitcom. It’s not something I have ever watched but I felt pretty sure from the clips that they showed when announcing the nominees that it was tripe.

In the interest of fairness I decided to watch an episode so that I could give you, the reader, a proper informed opinion. And here it is. It’s shit. The main joke seems to be that she is funny looking and a bit posh. Tall, big boned and with an annoying voice she plays the role well but it really is something that should have been banished from television a long time ago.

There was one scene which did actually make me laugh. She ended up having to deliver a eulogy for a deceased relative but she wasn’t sure which member of her family had actually died. I laughed out loud twice before the rest of the show descended into comedy prat falls and jokes about M People songs (that’s right M people.)

Maybe I just don’t get ‘television comedy’ anymore; it’s made for younger cooler people than me and I just bitter. I like to think I have a pretty good idea of what is funny. Having grown up with Channel 4 showing Just for Laughs from the Montreal Comedy Festival and other comedy specials (Bill Hicks, Sean Hughes, Emo Philips,Paul Merton and more) I’ve always been interested in what makes funny on TV.

Fugue

Well, January has arrived. It has to be said, as months go; it has all the charm and wit of a gonorrheal goat with lustful intentions. As memories of the festive season fade I can’t help but feel that this calendar period is designed to bitch slap all those who got carried away with goodwill to all men and joy to the world. Smack!!! Don’t you ever forget you are part of the rat race and life sucks.

I know January blues are hardly the most original topics but I really thought it would be different for me this year. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t overspend at Christmas. I mean money is tight, but then it always is. I don’t have a mega credit card bill coming my way. That should be a relief, right?

January 2010 was a good one. I was making plans. I had projects and schemes ahead. I knew I was embarking on an exciting new time in my life. And so it proved. Last year was a productive one. Surely with the start of the New Year I should be feeling eager to carry on from my relative success as novice writer to becoming a partially recognised one.

Instead I’m unmotivated, listless, disorganised, anxious and just in a general funk (and not the cool Bootsy Collins kind.) When it comes to making the most basic decisions I’m bereft of any kind of definite opinion. I have taken to stopping dead in the street while I contemplate which foot I should use to take the next step.

These bouts of inertia can last up to five minutes. One such occurrence was, by pure chance, outside one of the ‘Adult Entertainment’ shops on Capel St. Such was my disorientation that I barely registered the strange glances I was getting from passing pensioners.

Coming off the back of two of the busiest months I have ever experienced I was looking forward to having five days off in a row last week. But having nothing to do meant I couldn’t relax. My brain was adamant that we should be completing some task or other. My body wasn’t so sure and when my mind couldn’t make convincing argument as to what exactly we should be busying ourselves with, my body won that debate.

I’m aware I sound like I am blaming January for my indecisive fugue. I am. The alternative, that it is of my own doing, just doesn’t float. I’m a positive, motivated person with a sparky nature…or I try to be. But it’s not happening at the moment and nothing has changed. Except the calendar.

Nefarious

As someone who has never been on the receiving end of racism I can only imagine how hurtful it must be. Judging someone by the colour of their skin or their country of origins is the basest form of ignorance and pointless stupidity.

Being Irish, of course I’m sure not all my compatriots can say they’ve never experienced some from of xenophobia, either in relation to the potato eating leprechaun or the car bomb planting terrorist. We have a tendency to laugh it off now, sure we’re great crack, everyone loves us, that’s all in the past. And if you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

Maybe this is the best way to deal with bigotry although I’m sure Irish people who have suffered abuse and segregation would (understandably) disagree. It’s not so easy to be flippant when you or your family have been degraded or had to endure indignities because of where you are from.

So I can completely understand why there is such an abhorrence of a very certain ‘N-Word’ by the people who it has affected. It is a word that has been used with cruelty to degrade, belittle and alienate entire races.



What needs to be remembered however, that a word can only be as hurtful and offensive as the hate behind it. The problem isn’t the combination of letters that form the word, but the memory of murder, rape, oppression and slavery that it has been based on, sadly even to this day.

It’s this point that highlights the ludicrousness of the decision for future editions of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to be published without the ‘N-Word.’ It’s not the fact that the character Jim is referred to as ‘nigger’ that is offensive. It the abuse and intolerance he copes with on a daily basis.

Despite this Jim is possibly the noblest adult character in what is one of the first books to address the subject of an unequal and unjust America. Mark Twain was intelligent and articulate, one of the greatest writers of his generation. A declared liberal and civil rights supporter in a time when such things were not popular in his home state of Missouri, the only group he was attacking in his opus was the ignorant.

One of the main points of this classic work of literature is that the main character, Huck, learns to question the accepted norm, that is racist and exclusionist, and begins to treat people for who they are rather than pigmentation or class.

Censoring a word will not change the fact that racism exists or, that even today, African Americans can probably still consider themselves second class citizens. Nor will its eradication make it easier to forget the past.

Apparently some of the thinking behind it is that people won’t read it because the tome is already assumed to be racist partially due to the 219 times that the offending word is used. But with the word being used in such a way to highlight ignorance of the user, surely explanation and education is better than suppression or restriction.

The only thing that is affected by this is the work of one of the Great American Writers. When the world already suspects that as a nation, America is some what anti intellectual, why perpetuate this by messing with one of their own masterpieces?



Even I can see that it is pointless move with no benefit to anyone. And I’m just a thick Paddy.