A Sick Joke? Censorship in Comedy

Following the crazy reaction to the Sachs/Ross/Brand affair, we run down some history about which comedians have also felt the firm hand of the right-wing media.

Lenny Bruce
Hailed by Eddie Izzard as 'the Jesus Christ of comedy' Lenny Bruce defined the role of a shocking anti- establishment comedian. An incendiary wordsmith, he learned his craft in the sleazy strip clubs of America’s West Coast but quickly developed a more complex cerebral style. This led him to the heights of Carnegie Hall, where his routines satirizing religion, the government and conservative morals made him the most controversial and challenging comic of his day.

This rise to fame however, was dogged by drug use, censorship and indictments. Police began to routinely appear, and be heckled, at Bruce’s gigs to check his material did not breach obscenity laws. This lead to some hilarious routines involving Bruce spelling out dirty words rather than saying them to avoid a night in the cells. By the loosest interpretation of the law, the material was not obscene, however, Bruce’s penchant to defend himself in court and turn his defense into a stand up gig did not help matters.

By 1964 the authorities had ruined the career of the brightest comedian in America. Club owners refused to book Bruce, frightened by the prospect of losing their license should he be busted. A handful of his devoted fans flocked to tiny gigs where he made material from his trial transcripts, mercilessly attacking moral hypocrisy of the legal system.

Bruce committed suicide in 1966. He may have broken all the moral boundaries of his time, but all convictions against him have since been posthumously overturned.

Dustin Hoffman played Lenny Bruce in 1974 movie Lenny - get it here for around £4.

Bill Hicks
Bill Hicks began performing stand-up at 15 years of age, before he was even legally allowed into the venues he entertained. The most natural performer to come out of Houston, Texas in many generations, his lyrically fluent oratory and viciously sharp wit have earned him an army of followers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Unsurprisingly, Hicks too was the subject of a censorship scandal, after his entire set was cut from the Late Show with David Letterman in 1993. The routine in question involved a string of jokes mocking the right-wing Christian community in America and their staunchly pro-life beliefs.

Hicks satirized not their stance on abortion itself, but the ridiculous semantic formation they use to justify it. “If you're pro-life, what does that make me?” he logically stated, continuing: “If you're pro-life, don’t block medical clinics. Lock arms and block cemeteries." He then acted out a skit where pro-lifers block a coffin at the cemetery gates: “She can’t come in” / “She was 98, she was hit by a bus” / “There will be no death on this planet, get her out of that casket.”

Despite a very warm reception by the studio audience and production team, with even David Letterman praising Bill, the network pulled the set. Hicks was later to point out the prevalence of pro-life political advertisements between the shows segments, and felt that the political and economic muscle of the evangelical right had led to his ‘silly jokes’ being cut.

Peter Cook
Thanks to the Theatres Act of 1968, virtually nothing has been censored on the British stage for forty years. However, if anyone pushed the boundaries it was the self styled founder of satire Peter Cook.

Cook rose to fame in the revolutionary stage show Beyond the Fringe alongside Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore and Jonathan Miller. The show’s aggressively political stance knocked everything from nuclear weapons and the ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ theory of defence, to incumbent Tory Prime Minister Harold MacMillan. Cook’s impersonation of MacMillan caused such a stir it prompted the PM himself to attend a performance, whereupon Cook mercilessly verbally abused him.

Cook went on to found Private Eye magazine, The Establishment – a legendary comedy and jazz bar now alas defunct – and star in perhaps the most foul-mouthed comedy record of all time – Derek and Clive’s Ad Naseum.

Cook was hugely influential in showing comedians that no one was above mockery. He heralded a boom in ironic dry wit that shook the nation and helped to shape the British sense of humour to become what it is today. Most amazingly to my mind though, is that his routines have become proof that swearing can be big, and very very clever.

These lessons demonstrate that freedom of speech is essential for any vibrant and flourishing culture. As Janet Street Porter pointed out this week, Sachsgate was a flash in the pan event, which on initial broadcast attracted less than a handful of complaints.

The fact that every BBC exec with a child was on half-term holiday at the time meant that the case was very incompetently handled. This left the door open for the moral majority to profess more disapproval than the subjects of the comments themselves, who can’t wait for the unnecessary furore to die down. The crazy right wing weirdoes who tried to have Stewart Lee arrested for blasphemy for writing Jerry Springer the Opera are the same people who have instigated this witch hunt.

The BBC, as a public sector broadcaster, is a unique and precious forum for edgy and controversial acts that would not be given as free a license under a private company. Ross and Brand’s comments may have seemed distasteful, but taste is such a subjective and fluid concept that, as the above examples demonstrate, often attempts to stifle free speech in it’s interest denies our culture of its most urgent and vital voices.

Besides, none of the below were suspended or forced to resign. I’ll let you decide if they are more offensive than Ross and Brand.

Jeremy Clarkson on Lorry Driving:
"This is a hard job and I'm not just saying this to win favour with lorry drivers, it's a hard job. Change gear, change gear, change gear, check your mirrors, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day."

The Duke of Edinburgh in Scotland after the Dunblane massacre:
"If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?"

George Bush joking about his administration's failure to find WMDs in Iraq as he narrated a comic slideshow during the Radio & TV Correspondents' Association dinner, Washington, D.C., March 24, 2004:
"Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere!"

Click below to watch a classic, irreverent Bills Hicks sketch about drugs and music to cheer yourself up.