IIRC he also called Anne Frank lazy because she didn't do a sequel, swiftly followed by a look to the audience that said he knew how close to the wind he was sailing.
There will always be someone who feels genuine offence at things but I don't think comedy should rein itself in. If they aren't funny then their audience will soon let them know.
As an aside, the likes of Roy Chubby Brown and Jim Davidson seem to have gone so society policing itself sort of works. Maybe in a decade or two we will look back at Jimmy Carr and wonder how we (for those that do) ever found him funny.
Yep, that's the one! Watched it on my IPTV last night. I mean, he also takes the piss out of the Terrence Higgins Aids Trust and wanking on backs in the same routine.
I thought the likes of Brown were vulgar, but do remember laughing as a kid to Jim Davidson and him doing his 'Chalkie' impression of a black man. As a kid from Moss Side, I never thought anything of it at the time, and why it would be so offensive to the kids I grew up with?
I still love In Sickness and in Health, Rising Damp, Fawlty Towers, Fools and Horses, all with racist jokes in them, all comedies which still make me laugh.
As you become older, you become educated, but that doesn't mean that some stuff I found funny back then, I also don't find funny now.
I try to apply context, although hearing the Major use the N and P words in the very first episode of Fawlty Towers is where the line deviates away from intended comedy and reflects a time when society wasn't so culturally mixed and informed?
If we cancel everybody, in the end the ability to respect a different perspective or debate a position, will be a thing of the past?
Anyhow, in 20 years Tommy Cooper will still be brilliantly funny and Freddie Starr will still be shit.
