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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| Yes, I make fun of Dad’s dementia – and he’d be delighted if he knew why | Yes, I make fun of Dad’s dementia – and he’d be delighted if he knew why |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| A couple of days ago, having seen the prime minister say the phrase strong and stable about 75 times in the space of a five-minute interview, I tweeted this: | A couple of days ago, having seen the prime minister say the phrase strong and stable about 75 times in the space of a five-minute interview, I tweeted this: |
| I must say Theresa May is very good at saying the same thing again and again #strongandstable. So is my dad. Who has dementia. | I must say Theresa May is very good at saying the same thing again and again #strongandstable. So is my dad. Who has dementia. |
| At the time of writing that has got 529 retweets and 1.3k likes. So anyone who has seen my show – where I talk about how those numbers represent, for a joke on Twitter, virtual laughs – will understand that I consider that to have fairly stormed it. Even without that analogy, it indicates some level of approval. | |
| If I – the son of these people – am not offended, then you, person desperate to be offended, can do one | |
| However, within the Twitter yin and yang, anything that attracts approval, and is therefore retweeted a lot, must also invite stern disapproval from someone. And so it was that Fish Goujon McBrexit – a man you can tell straight away has taste and judgment, especially in his decision to have the initials FGM – responded: | |
| @Baddiel Low use of your dad there... Corbyn is wayyyyy more whacked out than your old fella. | @Baddiel Low use of your dad there... Corbyn is wayyyyy more whacked out than your old fella. |
| So there’re a number of things we could discuss here – the odd spelling of “wayyyyy”, particularly in a format where characters are limited; the inference that because I’ve made a joke about May I must be a Corbynista (a misapprehension that could so easily be sorted by a small glance at my timeline); and primarily, the idea that putting my father’s illness into a joke is somehow “low”. | So there’re a number of things we could discuss here – the odd spelling of “wayyyyy”, particularly in a format where characters are limited; the inference that because I’ve made a joke about May I must be a Corbynista (a misapprehension that could so easily be sorted by a small glance at my timeline); and primarily, the idea that putting my father’s illness into a joke is somehow “low”. |
| I’ve been doing a show for some time now about my family. It’s really a show about memory, and its two main subject matters are my late mother’s infidelity and my non-late father’s dementia. Part of what I’m doing in the show is trying to outflank the many, many people like Fish Goujon McBrexit who think they can tell comedians – or anyone – what is and isn’t acceptable to joke about. Because I’m doing jokes, and telling stories, about my family. A lot of what I say is outrageous. But my contention is: if I – the son of these people – am not offended, then you, person desperate to be offended, can do one. In fact I said exactly that, to my friend FGM: | I’ve been doing a show for some time now about my family. It’s really a show about memory, and its two main subject matters are my late mother’s infidelity and my non-late father’s dementia. Part of what I’m doing in the show is trying to outflank the many, many people like Fish Goujon McBrexit who think they can tell comedians – or anyone – what is and isn’t acceptable to joke about. Because I’m doing jokes, and telling stories, about my family. A lot of what I say is outrageous. But my contention is: if I – the son of these people – am not offended, then you, person desperate to be offended, can do one. In fact I said exactly that, to my friend FGM: |
| A. Don't tell me not to make jokes about my own father. B. I make loads of jokes about Corbyn. Read my TL. C. Fuck off. https://t.co/7sQnpt2yXv | A. Don't tell me not to make jokes about my own father. B. I make loads of jokes about Corbyn. Read my TL. C. Fuck off. https://t.co/7sQnpt2yXv |
| Of course we are also dealing with another issue here. Which is the category error the people who wish to be outraged on social media make around comedy and subject matter. That’s where people go with jokes: is it acceptable, it is asked in hushed tones, to tell a joke about dementia – or cancer, or rape, or race, or the Holocaust? But you can, always, because the subject isn’t key. You certainly can tell a hateful mean joke about all these subjects; or you can tell one which satirises attitudes to that subject; or one which makes victims feel less alone; or one that can be interpreted in any number of other ways – but what it means depends on the telling. Which means: the context, the delivery, the story told, the words themselves, even the word order. If you really must call out a comedian for their jokes, I’d advise a crash course in deconstruction with the ghost of Jacques Derrida himself first. | Of course we are also dealing with another issue here. Which is the category error the people who wish to be outraged on social media make around comedy and subject matter. That’s where people go with jokes: is it acceptable, it is asked in hushed tones, to tell a joke about dementia – or cancer, or rape, or race, or the Holocaust? But you can, always, because the subject isn’t key. You certainly can tell a hateful mean joke about all these subjects; or you can tell one which satirises attitudes to that subject; or one which makes victims feel less alone; or one that can be interpreted in any number of other ways – but what it means depends on the telling. Which means: the context, the delivery, the story told, the words themselves, even the word order. If you really must call out a comedian for their jokes, I’d advise a crash course in deconstruction with the ghost of Jacques Derrida himself first. |
| To deconstruct my joke about Theresa May (and by the way, I was unaware that something similar was said by Andy Hamilton on Have I Got News For You, I didn’t see that and then forget about it, despite having my father’s genes) my point is simply that saying something over and over again renders it meaningless. Indeed, after a while, all it means is the repetition. That’s all the hearer notices, not the meaning. Which is exactly the condition that you end up in when you spend a lot of time with someone with dementia. That is not using my father: that is just an analogy. | To deconstruct my joke about Theresa May (and by the way, I was unaware that something similar was said by Andy Hamilton on Have I Got News For You, I didn’t see that and then forget about it, despite having my father’s genes) my point is simply that saying something over and over again renders it meaningless. Indeed, after a while, all it means is the repetition. That’s all the hearer notices, not the meaning. Which is exactly the condition that you end up in when you spend a lot of time with someone with dementia. That is not using my father: that is just an analogy. |
| Which, yes, is using my father’s illness: to make a joke (he was a man who always made a lot of jokes, and indeed still does). A joke that I know – in a way that FGM, not being my father’s son, does not – he would’ve approved of. Because my father, for his whole life, hated the Tories. He remembers very little now, but undoubtedly, and not just because he has Pick’s disease (a dementia that renders you prone to obscenity) were you to show him a photo of Margaret Thatcher, he would still call her, as he always did, an appalling shitbag. | |
| Thus I think I am on safe ground in contending that he would like nothing more, were he self-aware about his illness, than that it should be put to good use attacking her spiritual heir, the prime minister. In fact, I actually think that despite his illness, my dad would make a better prime minister. He may even get there, with his campaign buzz phrase, repeated extremely often I imagine: Margaret Thatcher – what an appalling shitbag. | Thus I think I am on safe ground in contending that he would like nothing more, were he self-aware about his illness, than that it should be put to good use attacking her spiritual heir, the prime minister. In fact, I actually think that despite his illness, my dad would make a better prime minister. He may even get there, with his campaign buzz phrase, repeated extremely often I imagine: Margaret Thatcher – what an appalling shitbag. |
| • My Family: Not the Sitcom runs at the Playhouse Theatre until 3 June |