Why Does British Comedy Still Dehumanise The Disabled?

“Wuh?” I think I said, although I’d heard him perfectly well.

“Spastics, he said again. “Look. They’ve put them in the front row. Helmets and everything. They shouldn’t let them in. It’s not like they’re going to get anything out of it. Bloody hell. How are we supposed to cope with that?”

Obviously, I should have said something like, “by being grown-up human beings, you short-arsed prat”. I didn’t, of course. I don’t remember my exact reply, but I’d imagine it was another corker of the “wuh” variety. I just remember thinking, why say that to me? What signals have I sent out that made you think it might be OK?

He wasn’t joking. He meant it. But jokes are to blame. British comedy dehumanises the disabled. It’s a bizarre blip. You don’t hear racial jokes any more or sexist ones, or even very many gay ones. But with the disabled, in the clubs, it’s still the 1970s. And the Ricky Gervais defence — it’s funny because it’s taboo — was disingenuous to start with and is frankly getting a bit old.

Frankie Boyle, the stand-up comedian best known for Mock the Week, has been taking a tabloid battering for a grubby routine about people with Down’s syndrome. I’ve seen Boyle perform a few times. He’s funny, for the most part; probably one of the best around. But there’s always a bit where I want to stop laughing abruptly. Suddenly he’s too nasty and foaming a bit, and I feel dirty and complicit, and irresponsible for even being there. These, I suspect, are the moments he lives for. Like a great many comedians, Boyle seems to hate his audiences, and himself a bit, too. But we pay and go along and watch all the same.

This, I think, is why the nation’s most popular comedians keep saying things that make the nation want to see them get punched in the face. The anger comes not from what it says about them, but about us. Why do they tell us these jokes? What signals are we sending out that make them think that this might be OK?