After Eddie Izzard claimed right-wing comics are often ‘sexist and racist’… What rot! It’s the Lefties who spout endless bile, says STEPHEN POLLARD
For many years I deluded myself that the point of a comedian was to be funny.
Then I saw Eddie Izzard perform – or Suzy, as he now wants to be known – and realised how wrong I was.
What was delivered was a rant – an hour of moaning about the Government, the Right, and anything that didn’t conform to progressive oh-so-woke prejudices.
It lasted only an hour for me because that’s when I walked out. I had better things to do with my time.
Izzard is just another of that phalanx of achingly dull, yawningly predictable knee-jerk Lefties – along with the likes of Marcus Brigstocke, Mark Thomas and Nish Kumar – who have built an entire career whingeing about ‘the Tories’.
What was delivered was a rant – an hour of moaning about the Government, the Right, and anything that didn’t conform to progressive oh-so-woke prejudices, says Stephen Pollard (Izzard pictured in 2022)
Perhaps Izzard is referring to the likes of Jim Davidson, but when was the last time you saw him on mainstream TV? (pictured in Janurary 2022)
That’s why there is such a deep irony in Izzard’s latest claim, that ‘Right-wing stand-ups tend to be sexist and racist comedians who we thought would have gone away, but they’re still there’.
First, there are only a tiny number of obviously Right-wing comedians.
There’s Geoff Northcott, ‘the UK’s only declared Conservative comedian’, and the wonderful Simon Evans, who ploughs a lonely furrow as a Right-wing regular on BBC panel shows.
Perhaps Izzard is referring to the likes of Jim Davidson, but when was the last time you saw him on mainstream TV?
The real irony, however, is the total lack of self-awareness that is so typical of those who parade their own supposed virtue as a badge of honour.
Because when it comes to vicious jokes, to sheer personal nastiness, racism and sexism, it’s these Leftie comedians who are the real villains.
The comedian Katherine Ryan has said it’s an ‘open secret’ that a prominent man in the industry is a ‘sexual predator’ but he has so far been able to escape identification.
And he’s not the only one. Sexual harassment is so rife in the stand-up sector that a group of female comedians two years ago formed a group called Get Off to combat it.
Race issues have also proved a minefield for the Left. When Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak resigned from the Cabinet last year over Boris Johnson’s leadership, Nish Kumar wrote: ‘Balancing out the fact that I can’t stand Javid or Sunak with the fact that I love to see a rich white man brought down by Asians.’
Izzard is just another of that phalanx of achingly dull, yawningly predictable knee-jerk Lefties – along with the likes of Marcus Brigstocke, Mark Thomas and Nish Kumar (pictured) – who have built an entire career whingeing about ‘the Tories’ (file image)
As for BBC regular Frankie Boyle, he seems incapable of behaving with common decency – making vile sexist jokes about the Queen, Katie Price and Rebecca Adlington (pictured on New World Order)
The story had nothing to do with race but, for Kumar, his moral superiority as a man of the Left made it acceptable to introduce that dimension.
The BBC Radio 4 News Quiz is a byword for relentless insults against anyone vaguely Right-wing masquerading as humour.
Michael Gove, for example, was described as ‘a foetus in a jar’ who ‘has a face that makes even the most pacifist of people reach for the shovel’.
In 2019, after a milkshake was thrown at Nigel Farage, Jo Brand joked on another BBC show: ‘Why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid?’
As for BBC regular Frankie Boyle, he seems incapable of behaving with common decency – making vile sexist jokes about the Queen, Katie Price and Rebecca Adlington.
Last year at a festival he joked about raping and murdering the TV presenter Holly Willoughby.
Give me a Right-wing comedian any day, above the preening hypocrisy of Izzard and his fellow Lefties.
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