My five-point plan to ban banter

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/02/plan-to-ban-banter-bantz-merchants

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A friend of a friend is due to be married soon. The gentleman in question is courteous, funny, polite, kind to animals and lets people out at junctions. In terms of sheer human decency, he's one of London's lovelier bachelors. However, there is one unignorable flaw. Something about him that makes us wonder whether we ought to take his intended aside and say, "Seriously, are you sure about this?".

You see, the first claim he makes on his Facebook profile is that he is a "top bantz merchant". He adds: "They call me the archbishop of Banterbury". He is in his 30s. Reader, take a few moments to let your chin stop shuddering before I continue.

"Banter" is something that people of a different generation might delicately refer to as a social disease. Wealthy men who are in their late teens and early 20s and attend a specific sort of educational institution are at the highest risk. However, it can affect all, regardless of age and gender. (Middle-aged television presenters and media agency workers who buy their clothes pre-aged are also especially vulnerable.)

The stigma is so great that the president of the Oxford Union requested funds to take legal action against the Tab student newspaper which alleged he was a member of an "elite drinking club" called the Banter Squadron – and was heavily criticised when it was found that he was a member after all. Has banter become a bit like smoking? Once everyone did it on buses, and now you have to sneak out to the back of a draughty car park if you want to indulge – and hope that no one sees you.

So what is banter? Urban Dictionary tells us it is "chat that is playful, intelligent or original. Banter is either something you posses [sic] or lack, there is no middle ground." However, that definition was supplied by a person called Zach_Banter, so it might not be entirely objective. Google it and the top results are for "the UK's favourite banter page" and a piece entitled "If you like 'banter', you are an idiot". Fans of banter love it because it makes them feel witty, sophisticated and urbane while allowing them to talk about having sex with one another's mothers.

Comedian Jack Whitehall probably provided the best showcase for the banter phenomenon on the sitcom Fresh Meat, when his character JP set his trainers on fire while he was wearing them in order to create a talking point.

I think it's time to ban banter. It's causing us nothing but heartache. It's become shorthand for "Can't you take a joke?", like the time a man in a bar elbowed me in the right nipple and told me he liked "big melons for breakfast" and subsequently found my distress hurtful because he was only trying to "have some bantz". It's not just offensive, it's not even inventively puerile enough to be considered a legitimate form of comedy. If you said "Do be do, do be do be do, da da da da da da da, WHEEEEEEE! Bantz!" self proclaimed banter fans would fall about laughing, assuming you had just said something that was too clever and funny to understand but was probably about testicles.

So here's my five-point plan to eliminate banter in polite society. And I speak as a woman who spent two years dating a man who would reply to all my sentences with "Was that an innuendo? In YOUR end-o! Lads!"

1) In clubs and pubs, banter will only be permitted in restricted areas, ideally the small, dark cupboards near the toilets where they keep the mops. Banterers will be unable to resist placing the mops on top of their head or next to their crotch for "comedic" purposes, and the exposure to germs will eventually cause them to develop a severe banter allergy.

2) Television programmes featuring banter will be preceded with the following mandatory warning: "This programme is not suitable for most human viewers as it contains people of an undefined IQ who would probably laugh if they shut their own hand in a car door."

3) Jack Wills stores will be forced to provide an etiquette class with every purchase. Shoppers will be taken to a stock room and taught how to have civil, serious conversations about jugs, knobs and rear entrances without wetting themselves.

4) Anyone using expressions derived from the word banter – including "banterous", "bantastic" and "bantersaurus rex" – will be poisoned.

5) Anyone who is found guilty of more than three instances of banter will be forced to watch a video of their old school rugby tour on a loop for three weeks, or however long it takes for them to be declared medically unfit for further exposure to banter.