09/12/2009

Defending Paddy McGuinness.

Paddy Mcguinness is "under fire". The cheeky Northern comedian is under attack, apparently.

Why is he under attack? Why, because of disgraceful things he said to the queen, of course.

Who has he come under attack from? Why, everyone, of course. Everyone in the world, according to some reports. Phillip wanted to throw a little darkie child at him halfway through his set, from what I gather - Although even I thought the bit where he wrote "Osama bomb here" on the side of Buckingham Palace in his own shit live via satellite was a bit much. And then that bit where he stamped on a swan until it was just a boot-smashed stain on the boards of the stage was well over the line.

Oh, wait, that's not what happened?

What? It's only the Mail picking on him, because they're humourless fuckers who're fine with claiming that freedom of speech is a human right when you're provably making up lies about black people, but will demand death for anyone caught speaking to the Queen without saluting, bowing, curtsying, singing the national anthem and thrashing yourself with wet reeds?

Suddenly, it all makes sense.

In an article that I'm not going to link to for fear of actually giving that pissy hate rag the clicks, Simon Cable has decided that jokes that have been around for years and years (And as such are capable of offending nobody) are the absolute height of hideousness, and that ITV must act quickly to Ban This Filth Now.

So, what did McGuinness say? How many times did he suggest that the queen takes it up the arse, or cack in a bowl onstage, then rub it in his hair?

None. None at all.

What he actually did, according to the Mail article, was make reference to a pointer he was using with the line "I know what you're thinking, I've got a small pointer."

Now, I'll give you chance to pick yourselves up off your chairs, and I understand if some of you might want to Dettol your eyes after reading that, but I'm afraid it gets worse.

He then went on to say 'You may be the Queen of our country, but we've got our own queen here in the north. Paul O'Grady.'

I'm afraid you're going to hell now, just for reading that line.

It would appear that the Mail has forgotten, but some of you with memories longer than thirty seconds and with some understanding of irony will remember that Paul O'Grady made his name as Lily Savage, an act where he dressed as a woman. Otherwise known as being a DRAG QUEEN. That's QUEEN. QUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN.

Essentially, what McGuiness said there isn't even a joke (Much like most of his material - fnar, fnar), it's a statement of fact. Paul O'Grady is a man from the north of England who became famous as a drag queen, and many people know and respect him for his work as an entertainer.

Now, I'm not going to say McGuinness is funny for one minute; I think he's a less interesting, less charming version of Peter Kay (And you might already know what I think about him), but that isn't the point of the story. At the end of the day, the Queen is eighty six years old, she's seen more of the world than just about any of us ever will and produced children herself, so does anybody actually believe that some tired sexual innuendo is actually going to offend her?

Well, it would seem that the Mail think it will, although all they can drum up in the way of support for their story is this lukewarm statement from one audience member:

'He really pushed it with some of those jokes, especially in front of the Queen.'

'Some of it was just toilet humour, not what you'd expect at a show like the Royal Variety Show. It was slightly disrespectful.'


Not exactly a flowing torrent of anger, is it? The rest of the article focuses on the Mail failing to find somebody else to say that the act was offensive, but managing to discover that the show would be cut down to fit it's on-air slot (Like just about everything else, ever), and that McGuinness' act might be cut to fit pre-watershed guidelines.

So now the goalposts have moved, haven't they? To begin with, what McGuinness said was "crude" and "lurid", but within a few hundred words it has become "possibly not suitable for pre-watershed viewing although we're not really sure yet", and all a spokesperson for Mediawatch managed to say was 'I'd like to think ITV will take all the necessary steps to make sure that the Royal Variety Show is suitable for a pre-watershed audience' - Which yet again, doesn't indicate that anything McGuinness said might have made the queen cry; Later on in the show, one of Diversity could have violently castrated himself with an axe for all I know, and I'd like to think that they'd cut that before putting it on telly, just the same as if Alexandra Burke had held up a side reading "Kidnap Children" during her dance routine.

For a paper obsessed with being "Anti-PC" and constantly wailing that freedom of speech is being curtailed in this country, the Mail does a fine line in picking on comedians when they dare to push the boundaries (Or in this case, make some tired old jokes about willies), don't they? I mean, when you consider that as far as they're concerned, Rod Liddle is allowed to lie about crime figures because it his job to "provoke", surely getting all pissy about a couple of unfunny jokes is a slightly unjustified reaction, really?

Luckily, at time of writing, there are no comments on this article; I can already imagine all the hugely promoted "Send him to the tower, Gor blimey" comments that are likely to crop up throughout the day as the Mail's readers feel the need to vomit their own middle class frustrations all over the internet in the form of barely disguised racism and humourless fucknuttery.

2 comments:

  1. After reading this article, in which you shamelessly reproduced the violent, hate filled rantings of this sick, so-called comic, I put my foot through the internet and sent Al Gore the bill.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete