Last laugh / Why modern ‘comedians’ like Romesh Ranganathan aren’t funny |
It’s funny that the George Orwell statue outside the BBC’s Broadcasting House has a quote etched nearby from a proposed preface to Animal Farm: ‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’. It’s almost ‘Orwellian’ in itself – an act of blackwhite Newspeak – that the BBC, of all institutions, have long touted this as their mantra. In recent years, the British liberal establishment – whose propaganda wing is the BBC – have added laugh-or-you’ll-cry modern examples of doublethink, not least telling us that ‘A woman can have a penis.’ The blood runs cold imagining what Orwell would make of it.
Another both silly and sinister trait of the modern Western authoritarian state is insisting that you find someone funny when they’re totally not. Being an invalid, I listen to the radio a lot, and I’m amused to find that I actively seek out the comedy shows on Radio 4, especially the panel ones. They make me feel smug and superior because – while I’m not going to pretend that I’m part of any contemporary Algonquin Club – my mates and I are funnier over lunch than 99 per cent of professional paid comedians on radio and television are. Why is this?
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People generally used to become comedians because they were born funny or learned to be funny, and found that they could make........