Maddy audition Page 5

I like the yardstick of the law and the audience. If it's not against the law and the majority of the audience laughs, it's acceptable comedy. End of.

This sketch would never get performed on TV.

There's a good chance of it getting performed on stage to a small audience though, like NewsRevue.

I went to see Stewart Lee a couple of weeks after Maddy went missing and he dropped a few Maddy jokes. As with most of his material though, it was more clever than cruel.

Telling jokes about anything, race, fatties, ugos and so on.

I will happily take the piss out of them, but as long as you really don't feel that way, I don't see a problem, Bernard Manning truly was a racist hence why I didn't find him very funny.

Jimmy Carr on the other hand does pretty much anything but I know he doesn't truly feel that way so why should I think he’s a bastard?

I have censored myself before from telling a maddy joke because I was afraid I'd get booed of stage! I felt sorry about what her parents must be going through and don’t wish it on anyone, but I thought, there is a joke in this…

The idea that comedy is a rallying point to discuss serious issues, how true is that when we look at it?

How many people walk out of a comedy show thinking "I REALLY have to do something about that, it's outrageous"? Can anyone of us think of a single change in society brought about through comedy's satirical dissection?

Or does it provide the comedian with a nice living and appeases the audience's anxieties over an issue by turning it into something to laugh at? The possible danger in perception is that if you can laugh at something, it can't be that serious an issue?

Personally, I became interested in poverty not through Comic Relief but through the shocking images on the news. Re: this debate? I'm still unconvinced either way but I'm also thoroughly aware of my own hypocritical attitude over the issue because The Slagg Brothers have done one or two sketches that maybe cross the line.

I'm human therefore I'm a hypocrite, but I'm learning to deal with it.

I think it'd be funnier and more satirical if it was some low-brow wannabe who was testing for the part desperate for the publicity. Not a high-profile A-lister.

I think the counter-argument to that may be it's chicken-and-egg, that the show only reflected changes within society rather than the show initiating that change. Plus back in the 60s, TV penetration was surely more limited in effect than 'king' radio?

Quote: garyd @ February 3, 2008, 1:26 AM

You reckon?!! What planet are you on?!!!

I was outraged by the programme and if Mr Morris had been within reach...!!

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That Brass Eye was truly great, Mr Morris is a genius, obviously not your kind of thing though. It was not making fun of the issue, it was making fun of the media who blow the issue up and provoke hysteria so that the actual problem can not be treated in a level headed manner. You obviously wont agree with what Ive just put there, but there you go.

Quote: SlagA @ February 3, 2008, 12:41 PM

Plus back in the 60s, TV penetration was surely more limited in effect than 'king' radio?

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Not in regard to 'Week That Was', the whole show was actually cancelled due to its popularity because it was feared it would undermine an upcoming election!

I think my problem is that Russell Brand is a poor exemplar for the mainstream media that you seek to parody. You also seem to be mocking him in a rather cheap way and this seems to reflect on Maddy; I believe that satire has to be very sharp indeed to strike home on such a sensitive topic and it just came across as crude to me.

Quote: John Kelly @ February 2, 2008, 8:52 PM

Part of the role of comedy surely is to address those issues, however laterally, which the rest of society fails to want to think about. Hypocrisy is everywhere in the media. It sets up controversies, like racism and Jade Goody in the Big Brother house, only to condemn it afterwards.

I've met numerous paedophiles in my work over many years, and I can't think of one who hadn't themselves been abused as a child. They may have committed horrifically damaging acts, but they themselves were exactly the same child victims in the past, and their abuse was clearly related to the distorting of their sexuality as children. We rush to condemn to distance ourselves from crimes that we find horrifying, because no-one will run the risk of being associated with such behaviour. It's a modern-day witch-hunt.

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Agree totaly with the first part of this quote.
Second part I find difficult to believe. I mean is there actually any proof that ALL child sex offenders were abused as children.
I mean is there not the slightest possibility that SOME may be telling little tales. I simply can not believe that each & every offender was once a victim. Sure some, possibly many but not all.
All I know is that the human race likes to make excuses for their intolerable behaviour. "It was not my fault" "I did not mean to" "I hear voices in my head telling me too" "I was abused as a child" Blah blah blah.
Some may be telling the truth & i believe even the truth will be exagerated in order for excuse.

Also a modern day witch hunt in order to protect our small & vulnerable & then protect the future small & vulnerable,(Going by what you say on all offenders were victims) is a damn good idea.
Victims of crime should be helped. Not the perpertrators. Regardless of their alleged own experiences.

i've met some victims of abuse, who didn't become offenders, one guy was a govenor of a prison

paedo's ain't vampires

n.b. has comedy made a difference, "bowling for columbine" lead to wallmart stopping selling bullets,

mark thomas got a department of the government that subsidized arms sales disbanded

and hitler left a suicide note, saying he killed himself becuase he just saw that film where norman wisdom jumped out of a balloon and beat him up

seriously john major blames steve bells cartoons of him in his pants as in a big way destroying his credibility

i remember in the 1980s when thatcher was so fixed in power, and labour was so crap, it was the alternative comedians, and ska, and decnt films that kept the torch that there is a better way burning

certainly comedy terrified the nazis, they killed people for just making jokes

Portugese police man giving press conference.

Police

We in the Portugese police force are very sorry toannounce the resignation of chief inspector Comandante, Totale Buffoon, who was leading the investigation in to Maddy MacCanne’s disapearance. How were we to know he was an incompetent,alcoholic, with a pathological hatred for the English. We have now recruited a new investigator,Mohammed Al Fayed.

Enter Al Fayed

Al Fayed

It was Jack the Ripper, who is actually Prince Philip, because she was pregnant with a Muslim heir to the British throne, and he made Cadburys bring back that revolting Wispa bar….I am Al Fayedand I will have justice!

Probably making a rod for my own back on this, this sketch ran for 6 weeks in news revue. It was written in the week that it was revealed the main Portuguese investigator was a racist, alcoholic who had beaten a confession out of a tourist the year before. It was also just as the Diana inquest was starting up in all it's over priced pointlessness.

Seriously in this skit I'm only interested in media hysteria, and mean spirited tourism focussed police officers.

If you say 'help the victims not the paedos' and then you admit that some paedos were also victims, then that complicates matters a bit.

Give kids guns, thats what I say.

Quote: zooo @ February 3, 2008, 4:17 PM

If you say 'help the victims not the paedos' and then you admit that some paedos were also victims, then that complicates matters a bit.

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I think that's the point. Sure not all paedophiles were abused, though I think a lot were, not all victims become abusers definitely. But to posit: abuser = evil, victim = good, when the same person can be both makes life far more complicated than the media and indeed most of us want it to be.

All I was trying to say was that life is complicated, and comedy and satire can be very effective in exposing the hypocrisy we all tend to bring to these subjects, as we try to squeeze the facts to our own personal world view. It's unlikely to bring down a government on its own, but it's part of a whole culture that can. Certainly the ability to say such things is a profound freedom that is one of the first things they will take away when the tanks roll in.

Yup. Agreed!

More therapy is needed for victims of child abuse & tougher sentences for perpatrators. Some people always feel the need to find excuses for terrible behaviour. Yet no one feels sorry for the guy who steals or the woman who commits fraud. No one says "Hey well maybe that was bad scars from their childhood" It seems to me, the more vile the crime, the more some people want to nit pick at it in order find excuses.
Well let me explain why.
Child abusers like sex with children. They like to groom children & be their best friend so that they can then commit degrading acts on them.
Sex with children is not only moraly disgusting, but also against the law.
If people want to feel sorry for them then fine. Go & live on a childless island & enjoy the conversation with them.
I am sure you will find them incredibly stimulating.

I can not for the life of me, understand how anyone can even contemplate feeling sorry for these rapists. I dont give a f**k if they were abused as children or not. As adults they should know better. They shopuld be more inclined to want to help children not degrade them.

I have had things stolen from me when I was a kid. I dont steal.
I have been mugged as a kid. I am not a mugger.
If I was, would you want to nit pick & find excuses for my behaviour.
Me thinks not!