Ricky Gervaise is showing his true colours now. He loves “persuading” a friend to allow himself to be tied up with sellotape and laughing hysterically while doing it. He even uses his appearance on Comic Relief to ridicule the programme’s efforts and promote his latest dvd. People laugh because they think he’s joking.

Sadly, so much tv now is devoted to ridiculing and humiliating the participants. Jerry Springer, Weakest Link, Big Brother etc. Let’s have a “secret camera” show where comics are hauled up before TV bosses and told they are being banned from TV because of their offensive humour.

School bullies pick on students who are “different”. Others join in so as not to be associated with the victim. Do you remember the insulting words? Fatty, skinny, beanpole, short***, 4 eyes, pizzaface, braceface, badbreath and so on. Did you notice? We all fall in to one of those categories! So we may escape today but there’s always tomorrow.

There’s an old quotation from Nazi Germany. “When they came for the Jews, I did nothing. When they came for the gypsies and the disabled, I did nothing. When they came for me, there was nobody left to help me.”

It’s time to educate the masses that tomorrow they could be on the receiving end.

The problem is that offensive comedy generally has become very popular here of late - mocking people with disabilities, people at the bottom socially, racist jokes, misogynistic jokes and so on. Actually, there was a series called “Little Britain” in which a posh school product (male) played a “chav” character called Vicki Pollard and there was another routine in it about a man who pretended to be disabled, but got up and walked as soon as his carer’s back was turned. There’s this “lighten up cos it’s only a joke” culture. We also have a very vicious popular press here (particularly the Sun and the Daily Mail) which I believe encourages this kind of thing.

Ricky Gervais’s apology didn’t cut it. In fact, it just showed that he didn’t get it, because it still indicates that he thinks ME is some sort of luxury westerners can afford and people in other countries can’t. If you get ill in a third world country, you or your family become even more impoverished, or you die. We don’t hear about it because ME itself is not as common as AIDS or malaria, but it does actually happen in Africa. (It occurs in outbreaks as well as in individual cases, and there have been reported outbreaks in South Africa and Nigeria.)

One the of biggest problem sufferers of chronic diseases face is public awareness, even awareness within medical communities can be skewed and misinformed. Comedy that perpetuates stereotypes of illness makes me sick - I have written to Australian networks before regarding jokes made about people getting up out of wheelchairs to do things. Their ignorance simply perpetuated the myth that somebody in a wheelchair cannot walk at all - a lot of people can move but for whatever reason (mine is CRPS) cannot move far and require assistance, do we really deserve to be ridiculed for this?

It is sad that comedians are still finding it necessary to pick on those less fortunate than them…even sadder when their audience doesn’t seem to realise…I am glad to read that at least Gervais apologised for this! Rellacafa´s last blog ..Bumbling Through A Blob Day

I’ve had it since I was about 12 so about 16 years now, but with varying degrees of severity depending on certain factors such as stress, work/school/college and pregnancy. When I was a teenager my GP diagnosed me with it but said it was probably due to ‘growing pains’ and I would grow out of it, more recently it has been blamed on having young children to run around after, ‘probably not getting enough vitamins’ (though blood tests prove otherwise), and my weight. I’m looking forward to when they blame it on being middle-aged and elderly lol. I had to leave a school I really loved (after leaving the first one due to bullying) because I was falling asleep in lessons; and unable to complete any coursework whatsoever as I was so exhausted. It peaked after I had my second child; as I not only had chronic tiredness but chronic muscle and joint pain as well, as well as almost being bent double with back pain, I found glucosamine supplements helped with that immensely despite me being extremely sceptical that they would, and seemed to have put paid to that aspect of things for good InshaAllaah. Still the actual fatigue and flu-like symptoms side of thing is still bad enough to have forced a move from a house (not the stairs!) to a flat with a lift to practically outside my front door. My last GP was Muslim and she was actively involved in one of the local masjids but she was the least sympathetic of all, after many visits she prescribed me counselling (?!) in the end because 1, she believe it to all be in my mind or 2, at best due to being disorganised and poor time management which if it was that I’m not quite sure how conventional counselling would help anyway? I didn’t used to make a song and dance about my illness; and in the past very few people knew I had it but I didn’t need as much support then. I do often feel like I am being a moaner because I am made to feel that way SubhanAllaah.