19/10/06
Peacock & Davidson up a tree... -
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So keen am I to not be predictable.
Back again. Only had a few hours of restless sleep and was up at 8 this morning. Have just tried unsuccessfully to get back to sleep and so have decided to spend a bit of time with you on here, hope that's ok. Part of the reason that I couldn't sleep was because I kept thinking "I must write that thing about Jim Davidson before it goes off the front page of Chortle".
Yes, these are the things that I worry about.
And it has gone off the front page of Chortle now but that is the story of my career - either too far ahead of the trends or just behind them.
So, to recap, here is the article as it was written by Mr Bennett:
Jim Davidson is in the midst of another controversy after a cancer sufferer stormed out of his show over his jokes about cancer patients, blind people, the disabled and the stabbing of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor.
But the comic, who has never shied away from causing outrage, has vehemently denied making any such gags – saying he would have deserved a mass walkout if he had.
Mum-of-two Jacqueline Isherwood, 56, told the Bournemouth Echo: ‘Davidson made a cruel joke about breast cancer which really hit home. I was diagnosed with skin cancer two years ago.
‘When Davidson poked fun at a lady in a wheelchair and made jokes about blind people I couldn't stand any more and walked out.’
But Davidson defended his show at the town’s BIC venue, telling the paper: ‘She obviously wasn't listening. I'm sorry that this one lady missed the point. And miss the point she most certainly did.
‘If I had made jokes about cancer and blind people I would have expected the whole audience to get up and walk out. If what she is saying is true I would have got up and left myself.
‘I don't normally complain or explain but I will put on record that far from joking about Damilola Taylor my actual remark was that I thought the killers should be locked away forever. And if she objects to that then that is her prerogative.
Jacqueline's husband Graham added: ‘We were expecting Jim Davidson to be controversial but didn't expect him to be so offensive. This was totally unacceptable.’
Davidson has previously been slated after he tried to ban people in wheelchairs from the front row of his audience in Plymouth, saying they would put him off his performance.
There we go.
Now, to begin, I feel I must say that I am not a fan of Davidson for all the normal reasons, but - and it is a big but - I have to take his side on this.
Fucking hell that was a horrible thing to write.
What has been reported here is a major fucking gripe of mine. To be honest, I couldn't give a toss what he did or didn't say on stage, it is the reaction he has provoked that gets my goat. It says all you need to know about Mr and Mrs Isherwood in there. I fucking hate when an audience member turns because suddenly they take something personally. Are we going to get to a stage where comedians have to take a survey before beginning their acts?
The problem I think I have with it is the sheer arrogance it displays. If you look at the quotes from them in the article it's clear that they have no moral code other than for when things affect them directly - not that a moral code is relevant in comedy anyway, for all humour must put someone or something into a derogatory position, any joke can offend if the person being told it is sensitive enough. Yet, they were prepared for Davidson to be, as they put it, "controversial". What does that mean? When does controversial become offensive? Where is the line drawn for them? Quite clearly when it is something that triggers a relation to their personal lives. Their argument is monumentally flawed.
"Davidson made a cruel joke about breast cancer which really hit home. I was diagnosed with skin cancer two years ago."
So?
I really don't see the issue.
And, if we are going to be picky, breast cancer is completely different to skin cancer so it's not relevant even if we accept the premise.
I find the quote from Graham Isherwood particularly objectionable: "We were expecting Jim Davidson to be controversial but didn't expect him to be so offensive. This was totally unacceptable". I read that as him saying "We thought he might have a pop at the pakis but my wife has cancer! That is out of bounds!".
Look, I'm not saying that an audience member is unjustified in feeling discomfort when something strikes a chord in them. We can't decided what does and doesn't upset us. Any number of strange things can stir a melancholic emotion in me these days, but it is how we then react that is key I feel. If I felt the need to complain every time I was upset I'd be calling radio stations all day long demanding they no longer play the song that tipped me to tears, and denouncing the fact that they had the nerve to do so in the first place.
In the months following the London bombings you could observe audiences and pinpoint who had been directly affected by their body language when comedians discussed it. You could also see, in the main, that whilst this may have caused a degree of discomfort, they understood that part of the role of comedy is to take on difficult topics and find the humour in them, and so a respect for the convention and art was observed.
I'm not so sure that Jim Davidson would have thought about it in quite so much depth, but the principle remains the same. The fact that Mr and Mrs Isherwood ran to the press with the story makes my blood boil, and it's made even worse by the fact that they commit the additional cardinal sin (in my eyes) of being offended on behalf of someone else...but I don't think I need to go into that, we all have our own stories on that front.
I've had three incidents in my career (actually four - I just remembered another one) where I have upset audience members with the topic of material. Don't get me wrong, I've upset hundreds of audiences, but only four times when it has baffled me. Not so much that they were upset, more the reason for them being upset.
There was a time in Gloucester when I mentioned the word 'suicide' and a group of people made a big fuss and walked out. I'd mentioned the word, that's all. It wasn't a joke about suicide (although I believe that would still be acceptable).
Then there was the time earlier this year at the Glee Club in Birmingham. I'd said that there was a time and a place for laughing at disabled people...and it's the para-olympics.
Not clever, but it was naughty and so provoked a laugh.
Take the comment at face value and it's offensive, put it in within the context of the convention of a comedy club and we are closer to justification. However, the reaction I got from one lady threw me like I have never been thrown on stage before. She stood up and said that her husband was upset with me. I asked why. She said that it was because their daughter was pregnant and they had just found out that the baby was, and I quote, 'backward'.
Now.
I don't know what she expected to happen. I don't know what her ideal outcome would have been. I'm fucking good but I can't undo genetics. I just didn't get her point. It was such a tenuous link, so far out of my grasp of understanding. And she just stayed stood up, just looking at me as I looked around the rest of the room with a look of complete befuddlement. There was silence for a good twenty seconds. Then one bloke in the audience simply said "What???" and the rest of them joined in. I had no need to address it, the rest of the audience did it for me. Then the sound man at the Glee put his twopenneth in by playing "The Girl Is Mine" by Richard Cheese during the interval. If you don't know, it's a cover of the Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney song, and features a duet between Richard Cheese and a (parodied) Stephen Hawking.
That's why I love the Glee Birmingham (but I sill prefer Cardiff).
The other two incidents involve that old favourite, September 11th 2001, and these take some beating. Again, not the fact that people were upset, more their reasons...wait till you hear these...
First one was at Imperial College in London. I'd been doing stuff about Sept 11th, and it was at the time that I was doing the character so the humour was based predominantly around his ignorance of the situation, stuff like saying it wasn't Bin Laden who was responsible it would just be "kids messing about...happens all the time in Leeds..." that sort of thing.
There was a young American girl down the front (like she would be anywhere else - bit of casual xenophobia there).
"Can't talk about that! It's too sensistive!" she screamed at me.
"what's up with you?" I asked.
"Don't you realise?" she shouted, seemingly on the verge of tears.
"Realise what?"
This was her reason for being upset:
Ready?
"Those were the tallest buidings in America!"
Can you fucking believe that? What the fuck? Luckily I am blessed with such devastating wit that my response of "Well now they're the widest" sorted out the altercation decisively. In my defence I had to say something and fast.
But the final thing I am going to tell you about tops that I reckon. For an audience member's reason for taking offence it really can't be topped.
Edinburgh 2002, "Comedy Zone", Saturday Night, Pleasance Cabaret Bar, Sold Out.
Always raucous in the "Zone" at the weekends, mainly a local crowd, very beered up and very shouty. My favourite type of audience (well it was when I was doing the character).
I'm banging on about September 11th, almost everyone is laughing. I say 'almost' as I can see from the stage that there is a man right in the middle of the lower level who is seriously pissed off. He's glaring at me with hatred that I hadn't seen since leaving my previous girlfriend, and as I am a cunt about these sort of things I just keep on pushing it whilst looking directly at him, almost daring him to make his move.
He did make his move. A fucking Jedi wouldn't have been able to see this coming.
He stood up.
"SHUT UP!"
The entire room did, it fell eerily silent.
"Shut up shut up shut up shut up" he carried on, clearly not noticing that we all had.
"I've shut up..." I said, "What?"
"You can not discuss that in a comedic fashion"
I must confess that this alone was enough to throw me. Especially given that so far that evening the most eloquent heckle I had got was "Fat cunt". Suddenly there was a 'gentleman' challenging me.
"What's your problem?" I asked.
This was his reason for being upset about me discussing Spetember 11th:
Ready?
"I was there on the tenth".
I shit you not, that is what his argument was. For a moment I thought maybe he meant he was on the tenth floor, and was preparing to dig in my heels for a 'proper' argument and discussion about the validity of my comedy, but then he clarified it without being asked.
"I was there on the tenth of September".
It almost didn't dignify a response. I was fucking fuming with him. Mainly because he was having a pop at me for using it as material when he was essentially showing off that he's missed catastrophe by 24 hours. I bet even to this day he tells people that at bus stops, or at the job centre or wherever the fuck he goes. But it doesn't fucking mean anything. It is so far from relevant. And like I said, it almost didn't dignify a response.
Again, I say 'almost' because I had got a good one, and I was damned if I was going to let dignity get in the way.
"Well you're a fucking jinx mate...nobody come here tomorrow night for fuck's sake!"
I know, I know, you can say it...I'm amazing...
Comments:
· http://www.myspace.com/garwboy time. Bravo sir.
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