I rang up and talked about how it was part of a big tendency towards nasty comedy which made light of serious subjects like rape, and mentioned the incident in which Ricky Gervais caricatured ME sufferers as being people too lazy to go to work. I wasn’t allowed to mention his name on air (although I told the researchers who it was), but who it was isn’t really the issue anyway, just the fact that people think a devastating disease is some kind of joke.

You can hear the whole thing here if you’re in the UK. The feature on Frankie Boyle starts at the two-hour mark. My bit starts half an hour later. There was discussion on comedians who make anti-gay jokes and of the guy from Seinfeld who delivered the N-word rant on stage after being heckled.

OK, here’s the transcript of my bit.

JG: Right, let’s go to Matthew in New Malden. Hello, Matthew.

Me: Good morning.

JG: Right, yeah, go on.

Me: Right, this thing Frankie Boyle came out with is part of a whole tendency towards this kind of offensive comedy, and there’s this “lighten up” tendency, where people will tell shockingly offensive jokes about serious subjects, rape being one of the more common ones nowadays, and, you know, “it’s just a joke”, “lighten up”, “we’re just having a laugh”, and the problem with making jokes about people with mental impairments is that these people get harassed in the street all the time, and virtually ev — and there’s been surveys done on this subject, and virtually everyone has said in response to these surveys, “yes, this type of harassment, particularly from kids, is a daily feature of our lives, and there was an interview done with people who ran a sort of drop-in centre, and the drop-in centre’s open at [i.e. until] five, but all the people who use it leave at about three so they can get home before the kids get on the bus; they don’t have to share the bus with the kids, because the kids will harass them.

JG: Mm.

Me: And when comedians make money out of this kind of thing, and it’s not that new — there was apparently a time in the 1980s when people like Ben Elton could make a career out of humour that wasn’t offensive, but since about the 1990s in particular, a lot of comedy has been about terribly offensive subjects, and the response when you complain is, “oh, lighten up, get yourself a sense of humour”. But, like, you know, rape isn’t funny.

JG: But Matthew, do you see, what I’m dying to find out; what upset me is, I don’t know this Frankie Boyle guy, but it really upset me to think that people are paying to go and see him. I work for the BBC; Mel has already come in and said to me, “Jo, I don’t think ‘Down’s Syndrome’ is the phrase, I think it’s ‘people with Down’s’; now, my gut reaction is, does that matter, you know, people know what I’m talking about, and he went, “no, some people could be offended”. So here at the BBC, we have that amount of tact and decency, right …

Me: You can get really tripped up on terminology …

JG: Oh God, totally tripped up, I have to— and I don’t want to offend anyone, cos I am fascinated by this subject. But I have to be so careful about so many things, so many things. You know, swearing is one, and apologising is another, all this sort of thing. So, there’s this, there’s Ofcom, there’s all these people monitoring what all of us lot are coming out with. There are all these diversity groups going into schools saying “we’ve all got to embrace each other, we’ve all got to live together, it’s a melting pot”, blah blah blah. So, this is what we are trying to come to terms with, but what I’m asking is, basically, if we were left without the moral police around, would we all take the Mickey out of each other, because left to pay for a comic, we will go an pay for a man who is cruel, whether it’s to Down’s Syndrome (sic), or to people of certain races, or swimmers (a reference to another, personally offensive, Boyle gag); is that the norm? Is the norm the fact that we love to ridicule each other?

Me: Partly, that might be true, but someone might go and see a comedian they hadn’t expected to be too offensive and then find that he makes a really ignorant joke about a serious subject …

JG: But surely, Frankie Boyle, from what I understand that is his image. Wasn’t he taken off Mock the Week, or something, because he overstepped the mark …

Me: I don’t know about Frankie Boyle. But the particular incident I know about is a — do you mind if I name him?

JG: Uh, hang on. Mel? No, probably not, no.

Me: Well, I mentioned him to your researcher, but it’s a fairly well-known comedian, he’s done a particular TV series and then some kids’ books and then a stand-up show, and he did this routine in which he mocked people with the illness ME, and he did this routine in which he said he’d had someone collecting for ME, and he said, “oh, not MS, the crippling wasting disease, ME; that’s the one where, ‘don’t feel like going to work today’”, and he did this routine where someone was basically ringing up and pulling a sickie, and I think he compared it to people in third-world countries who are supposedly too ill or too tired to go to the well.

And the thing is, ME is a terrible, debilitating illness …

JG: Course it is, yeah …

Me: And you remember the case, the trial earlier this year with the mother who’d nursed her daughter [Kay and Lynn Gilderdale, respectively] for, like, seventeen years …

JG: And took her life in the end …

Me: Well, she took her own life, with a bit of help from her mother, but this young lady had had to live for sixteen years in a dark room — and she’d been brutalised, this is another aspect that wasn’t widely reported on; that lady had been brutalised again and again by doctors who variously mistreated her because, basically, a lot of doctors didn’t believe that the condition existed. But also, she’d had rather brutal treatment, including a sexual assault. And this lady had had to deal with all this alone, in a dark room, in more-or-less silence, in pain, for years and years and years, and that is what ME does to people.

JG: Mm.

Me: And it’s not funny, it’s not “yuppie flu”, but this chap was making jokes about it like it was something trivial.

JG: And were people laughing?

Me: As far as I could tell, yes.

JG: Because what is shocking me is, as much as the performer, is the audience. Because I …

Me: People will laugh at these things, sometimes it’s ignorance. People often don’t know ME … when I mentioned the case of Lynn Gilderdale to people at the dinner table, they said, “don’t you mean MS” …

JG: Yes, aah …

Me: People didn’t realise this condition was so debilitating, but when it comes to mentally impaired people, they will laugh at jokes about it, because they think, most people … if I used the word “retarded” to people in my family — we have two teachers in my family — I’ll be told off about it …

JG: Yes, yes, of course …

Me: But people will use that, you know, people will just make jokes about mentally impaired people, and it’s good that there’s an outcry, because it leads to people getting attacked in the street, that’s where it leads.

JG: Yes, of course …

Me: If people think rape is funny, you know, it’s not going to lead to women getting pounced on in the street, because there’s a certain type of man that does that, but it’ll lead, for example, if people think it’s funny, the sort of rape that goes on at parties and that sort of thing, when people are drunk and …

JG: Matthew, I totally, I absolutely understand, thank you very much for your call. Thank you for that. I totally understand where you’re coming from. What really, really upsets me is that we have the moral police, which gets in the way of my job an awful lot, because I think they’re pedantic, and in life an awful lot, but without them, and if we were left to our own natural reactions, would we all be laughing at each other’s shortfallings? Because you know, this guy is sold out wherever he goes. Now, it’s not like, you go and see an act, like Mike in the USA said, he emailed me saying that often, you go and see an act and they will go off on a tangent and you think, mate, “don’t go there, it’s not funny, you’ve made a mistake” and usually, you can see in their recovery that they’ve gone wrong. This guy Frank Boyle, from what I’ve heard on the radio this afternoon, what I’ve read about him in the papers, that’s his style, he’s cruel. So do you think we basically like cruel humour, and if we were allowed, you know, that’s what we would …

I always thought of Hyde Park Corner [actually Speakers’ Corner which is at Marble Arch, not Hyde Park Corner], right, freedom of speech, that is the greatest example of freedom of speech, but you can’t stand on your soap-box and make racist comments, because there are the police all the way around, you know, they are watching. So, how can a guy stand up in a comedy store, in a huge auditorium, a huge theatre, and I think it was 2,000 he was playing to, and walk away from making jokes like that? Is there ever a way of allowing that sort of humour? By him coming out with those kinds of gags, does it dispel the myths about people with disabilities? I don’t know. I want to know what you think.

This is the video of the Divan 2.0 meeting of Muslim bloggers at the London School of Economics, organised by Radical Middle Way, on 7th May. I was on the panel along with Omar Tufail of DeenPort, Mehzabeen from iMuslim and MuslimMatters, Musab Bora and one of the guys from AltMuslim, and the chair was Fareena Alam. I was told that they were hoping to launch the video on Friday, but here it is three days early (alhamdu lillah).

You can also download this MP4 file and watch it on any desktop video player - if you’re using Linux, you’ll need the restricted codecs to play it.

By the way, the same folks who made the Dispatches programme Undercover Mosque have made a follow-up, which is expected to air tomorrow, at 8pm. (I wonder if it’s coincidence that it goes out when a lot of people will be breaking their fast, rather than a week earlier.)

AD: Matthew’s on the line in Shepherd’s Bush. Good morning, Matthew.

Me: G’Morning. I’m calling to talk about this business with the Muslim council workers …

AD: The Tower Hamlets council …

Me: Yeah.

AD: Who, out of respect for Ramadan, have decided that councillors won’t have tea and biscuits.

Me: Yes, according to a story in which paper?

AD: Ah, yes, now this is interesting that you’re asking this. It’s the Daily Express …

Me: Yes, typical of the Daily Spew as I call it …

AD: And do you know …

Me: That paper has quite a history of what I consider malicious and probably exaggerated stories about what I consider inconsequential matters.

AD: And do you know, there’s a little box underneath the photograph that says, “are you fed up with minorities dictating to us?”

Me: Exactly. I’m fed up with minorities like people who work for the Daily Express shouting abuse at entire communities, which is usually Muslims in the case of that particular newspaper. Tower Hamlets is a place where there is a large proportion of British Muslims, not like west London where there are a lot of wealthy foreign Muslims; they are not, you know … I think it’s only reasonable to expect workers to show a bit of consideration to their colleagues, especially at a time, you know … Religion is a fact of life, and people need to show a bit of respect, and, um, um … particularly when there is a large religious minority. There are Muslims who are exempted from fasting, particularly if they’re travelling, although that won’t affect councils so much, because they’re all going to be locals, but they are told “don’t stuff your faces in front of people who are fasting”, and expecting work colleagues to show a bit of respect when they’re at work, it’s not too much to ask, in my opinion.

The other thing is, these newspapers, the Daily Express stories have been held up on certain extremist organisations’, well, the BNP, but they reproduce and link stories from the Daily Spew without comment. But also, I have heard of people being attacked in the street in London, I have heard, for example, a Muslim lady has told me personally that she has had dogs set on her, and I think that the influence of rags like this wretched Daily Spew rag is a big influence on it.

AD: Irresponsible headlines, you mean, can really cause …

Me: Yeah, irresponsible, trying to make headlines by stoking bigotry; it ought to be clamped down on, because this newspaper is basically a propaganda sheet which, um …

AD: Let me play Devil’s Advocate just for a second though, and say to you, OK, this is interesting, you’ve got here, because we heard from our councillor earlier today, our lady councillor Jean, who said that we live in a Christian country (my sigh is audible at this point), she said why are we calling it a Muslim-dominated council anyway, why are we even bringing religion into it?

Me: We live in a nominally Christian but predominantly not very religious country, but Tower Hamlets is not like the rest of the country; it’s not even like the rest of London, it’s a heavily Muslim-populated area …

AD: But why are we even mentioning the religious side of it?

Me: Because it’s about people being asked to show a bit of consideration for their religious neighbours, when … (a lot of you knows and uh’s) …

AD: Courtesy?

Me: You know, Muslims are expected to do a lot of accommodating the other way round, even in a … Easter Sunday, for example, is a Christian holiday, and even in a predominantly Muslim part of town like Tower Hamlets, Sunday opening for their business is banned on Easter Sunday, even though practising Christians are a minority now in this country. People still show consideration, and in Islam people are supposed to show consideration for their neighbours, and I don’t see why expecting others to show a bit of consideration by not stuffing their faces during council meetings …

AD: Yeah, when I heard it, my reaction wasn’t one of “religion” at all, it was about common courtesy …

Me: Yeah, I mean, by the way, I’m a driver for a living, and I’m going to have to go shortly for that reason, but I’m not allowed to eat and drink on, you know, swig a bottle of coke into my mouth while I’m driving, I could get done for not driving with due care and attention (AD agrees), and I don’t think it’s a “big ask” to ask Tower Hamlets council workers not to eat, you know, not to stuff their faces in front of their Muslim colleagues during the fast.

AD: Excellently put, Matthew; maybe it does …

Me: Thank you very much.