WHY WE MUST RESIST THE JOKE POLICE

By CHRISTIE DAVIES (Excerpts)

AN IRISHMAN went into a shop and asked for a bar of soap. The assistant asked if he would like it scented. "No, I'll take it with me now," was his reply. How do you conduct a census in Scotland? Drop five pounds in the street and count the crowd. How do you get a Welshman on to your roof? Tell him the drinks are on the house.

These jokes might be in the robust tradition of British humour, but they could not be broadcast today. Indeed. anyone telling such gags at a public function or in the office could be reprimanded or, even worse, might be asked to explain themselves to police or Britain's Commission for Racial Equality.

After months researching the way politically correct censorship is constraining our right to make jokes in public I have concluded that one of Britain's greatest assets - its sense of humour - is under threat from the malign and growing influence of the political correctness demagogues.

A vibrant sense of humour is a sign of a tolerant, open society: a powerful, self-confident civic culture knows jokes are not a danger to the social order but an indicator of its health, for true comedy flourishes where freedom is at its strongest; It is the totalitarian regime which usually has the greatest fear of public laughter. That is certainly the lesson of British history.

For centuries. the British sense of humour has been recognised across the world. It helped produce the bawdy delights of Chaucer, the unforgettable characters of Dickens, the wordplay of Shakespeare, the hilarity of the Ealing films such as The Lavender Hill Mob and The Ladykillers and the brilliance of television shows such as Fawlty Towers.

Poking fun at national stereotypes, sniggering at established mores and laughing at calamities are central parts of this tradition. It was one of the reasons Britain. unlike most other European nations in the 1930s, did not have a significant Fascist movement. The British found all those uniforms, rallies and goosestepping rather comic.

Today, the freedoxn to make jokes is being curtailed; self-appointed guardians of acceptable thinking. It is doubtful if Fawlty Towers could be made now, with its running joke about the idiocy of the Spanish waiter Manuel and its hilarious attack on the Germans...

Broadcaster Robin Page utters a quip at a countryside rally about the rights of one-legged black lesbians in the West Country and is placed in a police cell for using offensive language. And prison officer Colin Rose is sacked for telling an Osama bin Laden joke because the governor feared it might have been heard by Muslim visitors.

There has always been, in British culture, a tension between the attitudes of the establishment and public humour.... But today politically correct censorship is far more pervasive, reaching into every aspect of society...

The official crackdown on jokes is riven with double standards. Our airwaves are awash with obscenities and sex, yet officialdom becomes hysterical at any joke which might touch on a stereotype. Those from groups deemed to be "oppressed" can say what they like. But woe betide an "oppressor" trying to do the same.

So Christianity is an easy target for comedians (The BBC is about to broadcast a series called Popetown, ridiculing Catholics) but they never dare to attack Islam.

This hypocrisy should end. It is time we stopped being so fearful about officialdom and started to reclaim our sense of humour. Without it, we lose not only our jokes but one of our essential liberties.

The above article appeared in the Brisbane (Australia) "Sunday Mail" on February 22, 2004 (p. 58) but does not appear to be online anywhere other than in these excerpts. Christie Davies is a well-known academic expert on humour