Thank you very much. Thank you.
Welcome to Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle,
of which I, Stewart Lee, am the designated driver.
What I want to talk about this week is political correctness.
The political correctness gone mad.
I was in a service station on the M1
in August with my 13-month-old son. It was a Sunday night,
about 8.00, and he wandered off on his own.
He went in to the little gambling area where all the fruit machines are.
And then an announcement came over the Tannoy reminding him
that that area was for over-18s only.
There's very little point in using a Tannoy to tell him that,
because one, he's too small to reach the buttons.
He's about a foot-and-a-half tall.
Secondly, he doesn't have any money. He has no source of independent wealth.
Not possible for him to play the machines.
And thirdly, there's very little chance
that a 13-month-old child is gonna understand
the complexities of British gambling law,
even if he could speak English, which he can't.
There's very little point in doing that. It was political correctness gone mad.
What is it, political correctness gone mad?
Is it just the kind of thing we think is political correctness gone mad
cos we've not really thought about what political correctness means?
(CROWD CHEERS AND WHISTLES)
But it is easy to cause offence to a minority
without, perhaps, intending to.
I'll give an example.
I was doing a charity gig at Battersea Town Hall a couple of years ago,
and the dressing room was really nice,
uncharacteristically for a comedy dressing room, but they'd gone to town,
and there was a bunch of flowers and a bottle of wine in a cooler
and a "good luck" card.
I thought, " Well, that's great, they've really thought about this."
And then suddenly, on the floor up against the skirting board,
under the dressing table, I noticed this.
Now, what this is... it's...
a single, abandoned child's ballet shoe,
a small child's ballet shoe.
And that is a very distressing and sad object to find anywhere.
I started to feel uncomfortable and freaked out.
Why was it there in a room
which otherwise appeared to have been very carefully prepared?
Had some strange rumour gone round about me?
Had someone gone, " Of course, you know he won't even go on
"unless there's a single, abandoned child's ballet shoe in the dressing room"?
But it is an awful, sad thing.
You can see...
If I just... if I just move it over the heads of the crowd,
no-one even likes it coming near them.
People move away.
If I push it towards the viewer at home,
that is a terrible thing to see.
It's like... a horrible...
It's like a wave of sadness coming towards you.
Someone at home going, " Now, what is this? What is happening?
"I didn't pay my licence fee
"to have a small child's ballet shoe pushed towards my face."
Well, it appears you did.
Not a pleasant thing. We'll put it over there.
The more I looked at it the sadder I became.
I thought, "Why is that there?"
There's only two possible reasons
why that can be on the floor in the dressing room,
and neither of them are good.
One is it's been lost, which is sad.
And the other is that it's no longer needed...
...which is worse.
But I thought, "I'll roll with it."
I went out on stage and I took it out with me...
and started talking about it in front of about 500 people.
I said, " I found this in the dressing room. It's a sad thing.
"There's only two possible reasons why it's there.
"One is it's been lost, which is sad,
"the second is it's no longer required, which is worse." But there was no laugh,
no laugh at all,
just a terrible feeling of 500 people staring at me
with hate in their eyes.
People going, "Why have you done this? Why?"
And then I looked down, and on the front row
there was a very young, one-legged ballerina.
What are the chances of that happening?
Who could realistically have thought
you would make a joke about one-legged ballerinas
in the presence of a one-legged ballerina?
Good afternoon.
A BBC comedy programme
has sparked yet another wave of worldwide protest.
What are the chances of that happening?
REPORTER: To one Leicestershire family
a BBC comedy programme routine about a one-legged ballerina
was anything but funny.
Hello. BBC?
Yes, I'd like to register a complaint.
As licence payers, we expect to be able to watch
a television comedy programme
without there being anything in it that we don't completely agree with.
According to the One-legged Ballerina family of Lutterworth, the BBC
have made a grave error of judgment.
I am a one-legged ballerina, and so is my husband,
and so are both my children.
My dog has a leg missing and enjoys ballet.
We should have the same rights as everyone else.
It's political correctness gone mad, you know.
I doubt very much that the BBC would make a joke about one-legged Muslims
doing some sort of Muslim dance.
Dervishes.
And today, furious one-legged ballerinas
have been demonstrating against
comedian Stewart Lee's one-legged ballerina joke
all across the globe.
- In London... - CROWD: One leg good!
...Paris,
Istanbul,
and even Shetland.
Tomorrow the case will be presented to the broadcasting ombudsman.
If he finds in the BBC's favour,
then the demonstrators won't have a leg to stand on.
Goodbye.
- (PEOPLE SHOUT) One leg... - (STATIC CRACKLES)
- One leg good! Two legs bad! - (MACHINE GUNFIRE)
(TEST TONE BEEPS CONTINUOUSLY)
So it is possible to cause offence without intending to.
Now, I've...
On the same note, I've recently started going to Weight Watchers and...
Yeah, did you notice that - the silence?
The silence in the room, viewers at home. Did you notice?
What happened there was I said I've recently been going to Weight Watchers,
and there was a silence in the room here, OK?
Now, what that means comedically is
there was no laugh because I'm not so fat
that if I say I've been going to Weight Watchers,
everyone goes, " It's a bit late for that, ha-ha-ha."
But also I'm not so thin that if I say I've been going to Weight Watchers,
people go, " Why have you done that? That's ridiculous. Ha-ha-ha."
When I say I've been going to Weight Watchers,
you collectively just think,
"Yeah, maybe you should think about doing that."
You know?
"You know, you're in the danger zone."
I've recently been going to Weight Watchers, but I'm 40 years old.
Everyone else there is women.
It's embarrassing going to Weight Watchers as a 40-year-old man. It takes guts
to keep going to Weight Watchers as a middle-aged man. You have to be brave,
braver, in many ways, than a fireman or someone fighting in a war.
So I've been going to Weight Watchers,
but I'm the only person in Britain today, I think,
to be failing to lose weight as a result of Islam.
Now, don't worry.
If you're, say, an Independent On Sunday reader and you're thinking,
"I hope this isn't going to be needlessly offensive," don't worry.
Likewise, if you're a Top Gear viewer
thinking, " I hope this will be needlessly offensive..."
...don't worry, I've done this bit before on stage.
It was reviewed, this next bit, in the London free newspaper Metro
as being " tediously politically correct", OK?
So don't worry about being offended,
just get ready to be bored out of your tiny mind, OK?
The Weight Watchers I go to, Finsbury Park Weight Watchers,
there's only two men in that Weight Watchers,
me and a Polish man in his late 70s,
and everyone else there is women,
women of all creeds and colours and cultures
and races and shapes and sizes.
It's like a United Nations day out to a funfair hall of mirrors.
Which they did use to have, actually,
during... during the Kofi Annan era.
Er...
Kofi Annan would go with all the staff every weekend
to Coney Island funfair,
where Kofi Annan would look at himself in a slimming mirror...
...because he'd become very concerned about being overweight.
And he was overweight, Kofi Annan,
as a result of his habit of starting every day
with a breakfast of a coffee and a naan.
Kofi Annan, every day, a coffee and a naan.
Kofi Annan. " What would you like for breakfast, Kofi Annan?"
"Yes, please."
He could not escape the destiny of his name.
NEWSREEL: And so to the plains of Ghana, where,
just like here in Blighty,
an anxious father waits outside the door while his wife gives birth.
But in this funny land, there is a very unusual tradition
concerning the way a child is named.
REPORTER: And have you any idea what that thing is likely to be?
(LAUGHS)
(BABY CRIES)
So I've been going to Weight Watchers and I was in the queue
waiting to get weighed - you queue up to get weighed.
And about two or three in front of me
there was a young Muslim woman, about 23 years old,
wearing the hijab, the headscarf they wear
because there's a taboo in Islam about men seeing hair.
And she turned round to me - she was ever so polite - and she said,
"I do apologise, but I'm about to get weighed.
"Would you mind going out in the corridor?"
Now, in retrospect,
this was obviously cos she was gonna take the scarf off
and it wouldn't be appropriate for me to see her hair, but at the time,
I... I'm ashamed to say I didn't make the connection
and I just thought she didn't want me to see how much weight she'd put on.
So I said, " I'm not going out and I don't know what you're worried about, love,
"you're not even that fat."
And she said, "No, it's the..."
I realised immediately and I started to apologise,
but in between me and her
was a Hasidic Jewish woman about 50 years old
and she sort of butted in
and she looked at the young Muslim woman, then she looked at me,
and then she sort of raised her eyes.
She sort of went... (SIGHS)
...as if to go, " First the suicide bombings and now this."
The irony is that Hasidic Jewish women have a hair taboo as well,
and they shave back their hair and wear wigs over it.
So there is the young Muslim woman in the headscarf,
the Jewish woman in the wig. Me, I'm an atheist, right?
A fat atheist, admittedly, we've established.
But I didn't see why my attempts to lose weight
should be compromised in any way
by the hair anxieties of a God I don't necessarily believe in.
But it looked like there was gonna be a three-way argument.
I thought, "I can't stay here for this."
Cos if we ever are gonna decide
how exactly - if at all - God wants hair to be concealed,
that's not gonna happen at Finsbury Park Weight Watchers.
Cos it's Finsbury Park Weight Watchers,
not Finsbury Park Weight Watchers
and Religious Hair Taboo Discussion Circle.
Although I would go to that, obviously.
It would be ace.
Can I just say what a pleasure it is
to be back in metropolitan, sophisticated London
where that joke gets a laugh? I've been doing this round the country.
Here the idea of Finsbury Park Weight Watchers
and Religious Hair Taboo Discussion Circle
is understood as absurd.
Ha-ha. But... when I'm touring this material
up north - Carlisle, Derby -
I say, " Finsbury Park Weight Watchers
"and Religious Hair Taboo Discussion Circle,"
nothing, no laugh.
Just a load of northerners muttering to each other...
"Well, they would have that in that London."
"The kind of stupid thing they'd have."
What I say to people in the north, any of you watching...
...not every town has to have a cake named after it.
That infuriates them.
Cos there's two or three, which is enough to make them think there might be loads.
So I went out in the corridor,
and out in the corridor,
the old Polish man had already been sent out by the young Muslim woman.
And he looked at me and he made this kind of confused face.
And I looked away cos I was worried he was gonna say
something like "bloody Muslims".
So I looked away, cos I didn't wanna have to agree with something racist
out of politeness.
Cos I can do that whenever I go home at Christmas.
So I just looked at the floor, and I started to become irked,
cos I thought, " I've been sent out.
"I'm already embarrassed about going to Weight Watchers.
"I've been sent out, I'll lose my nerve,
"I'm never gonna come back.
"I'm gonna get fatter and fatter and die and all because of Islam."
Then I thought, "You know what?" I calmed down. I thought, " It doesn't matter.
"If I was a young Muslim in Britain today,
"I might feel quite put-upon.
"Maybe these cultural signifiers would become more important to me.
"It doesn't matter. It's 20 minutes out of my day.
"I can rejoin the queue. No matter."
I thought, " If I was in a queue for something normally,
"and there was someone behind me who was blind or in a wheelchair
"or mentally handicapped, I would let them go ahead of me."
Then I thought, " That's a bit weird.
"Because I've just equated having a religious belief
"with being mentally handicapped...
"...which obviously isn't appropriate,
"even though it is correct."
(STRONG WIND BLOWS)
(AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ON TV)
What's he on about?
Basically, he's saying that being religious is the same as being daft.
No, the daft aphid.
Aye.
I think it must be one of them "jokes" that they have down in that London.
Well, they have them down in that London, don't they, I suppose...
jokes.
Aye.
They have clowns and monkeys too, and they do dances in the streets
and the Londoners laugh at them
and throw money and quality sausages at them, apparently.
- The daft aphids. - Aye.
HUSBAND: Oh, dear. Have you done a smell?
WIFE: Aye. Must be the saveloy.
And then I got all annoyed again.
I thought, " I'm gonna go back in and I'm gonna go to her,
"'Y ou, Muslim, may be a contributing factor
"'in my ongoing and ultimately fatal weight gain.
"'Lf you must wear your hijab to Weight Watchers, then what I suggest you do
"'is take it off and weigh it separately before you come out...
"'... and then deduct its weight from your Weight Watchers total,
"'giving you your correct weight using maths,
"'which I understand your people claim to have invented." '
But I didn't do that. I just went back in and apologised.
She said, "That's fine," and I went on the... And, you know,
it hadn't... it hadn't been a good week.
But one hesitates in the current climate to make a joke
on television about the Muslims, right?
Not for fear of religious reprisals.
When's that ever harmed anyone?
But...
...but because of a more sort of slippery problem,
which is this, right?
When you make a joke amongst friends or to an audience like this...
These are sophisticated London people, they're clever, they get irony,
and they know it's not meant with any aggression or hatred.
But we don't know who's out there watching this.
Anyone could be watching this programme.
There's no way of preventing them, much against my betterjudgment.
It's now been broadcast. It's out of our control, right?
People there, we don't know what they think.
They could be laughing in a hostile way, going, "Ah, ha-ha-ha!"
Yeah, you don't know who's there.
The very worst people are out there.
You're fine, but there are people out there -
you wouldn't spit on them, I tell you - watching this, right?
Hostile, unpleasant people of the British viewing public. We don't know.
The problem is 84º% of people in Britain today -
that's you - probably not you -
but 84º% of people in Britain today
think that political correctness has gone mad.
(CROWD CHEERS AND WHISTLES)
Now, I don't think political correctness has gone mad.
People still get killed at random for their race or their sexuality.
And what is political correctness? It's... it's... an often clumsy, admittedly,
negotiation towards a kind of formal linguistic politeness.
There's problems with it, but it's better than what we had before.
I'm 40 years old. I can remember before political correctness.
When I was at school,1981, there was one Asian kid in our class,
and every day when the teacher read out the register,
instead of using his name, every day for a year, he called him "The Black Spot".
It wouldn't happen now.
And in the mid-'60s the Conservative Party won a by-election in Birmingham
when they sent out little kids with leaflets that said,
"If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour."
And if political correctness has achieved one thing,
it's to make racists in the Conservative Party
cloak their beliefs behind more creative language.
Things are better now.
30 or 40 years ago, it would have been acceptable
for a member of the Royal Family serving in the armed forces
to refer to a colleague as a p... No, that's now, isn't it?
That's happening now.
Sorry. He's not a racist, is he, Prince Harry?
He's just an idiot.
I blame the parents.
Whoever they are.
But 84º% of people think political correctness has gone mad.
The problem is if you do a joke on TV about the Muslims,
you don't want one of those people coming up to you and going, " Well done, mate.
"Well done for having a go at the bloody Muslims. Well done.
"You can't say anything these days. It's political correctness gone mad.
"You can't even write racist abuse on someone's car in excrement...
"...without the politically correct brigade jumping down your throat."
The picturesque village of Ferrety St Margaret has suddenly found itself
at the very centre of the debate on political correctness.
WOMAN: The people of this village
do not want to see the village green turned into
- a makeshift encampment every year... - Year in, year out.
...by the Village People.
(# VILLAGE PEOPLE: YMCA)
CROWD: Out, out, out, out, out, out!
STEWART: The Village People are a nomadic group of multicoloured homosexuals
who say they just wanna have a good time and hang out with all the boys.
But the residents of Ferrety St Margaret are not sympathetic.
(SIGHING) Honestly. I mean, look at this gay mess.
I mean, that old Red Indian one,
I'd seen him sitting in a lay-by eating a pork pie
without a care in the world.
And that lay-by, that ain't for Comanches.
That's for residents and for truckers on the way to Hereford.
STEWART: Of course, some of the Village People are black, aren't they?
Now look, I can see immediately where you're going with this.
The reason we don't want the Village People in our village
has nothing to do with race.
I haven't got a racist bone in my body.
In fact, as a younger woman, when I was doing volunteer work in the Congo,
I was very partial to the dark meat.
Very partial indeed.
MARTIN BENSON: Have they brightened up the village, or have they made it
a place which is a living hell?
They were doing their dancing and singing up to 11.20 last night.
I were trying to get to sleep. I go to sleep at half eight.
(LAUGHING)
We do have bins, but you know, they're just not using them.
(BANG!)
(CROWD CHEERS, WOMAN SCREAMS)
Well, they've put Mike in the cells overnight to cool down.
Apparently, you can't shoot a member of the Village People
with an antique blunderbuss in your own village any more.
It's political correctness gone mad!
These days, whenever someone says political correctness has gone mad,
I always think, " What do you actually mean? What is your real agenda here?"
Unless it's my nan, right?
My nan says to me, " Oh, Stew,
"that political correctness has gone mad, hasn't it?
"It's gone insane."
I go, "Why is that, Nan?"
And she goes, " I was in the hairdresser's up in the village the other day,
"and they said to me, 'W ould you like a cup of tea, Mrs Lewis? '
"I said, 'Oh, yes, please. Lovely tea.' And they said,
"'W ell, you can have one,
"'but you'll have to drink it in the waiting area,
"'cos we can't have hot liquids at the workstations.'
"It's political correctness gone mad, Stew.
"It's old Red Robbo from the Leyland, Stew.
"He's saying that we can't have hot tea any more
"in case it offends a Sikh."
Basically, there's a whole generation of people
who've confused political correctness with health and safety legislation.
But they will die soon.
"It's political correctness gone mad, Stew. It's not like the old...
"In the old days, Stew, you could get up in the morning,
"put your hand on a table
"and with your other hand smash all your fingers with a hammer
"and dance around on the shattered bones. You could go out, get in your car,
"daub it with all swastikas and things
"and drive - you couldn't drive cos your hand was all smashed -
"drive off down the motorway with one hand,
"mocking the disabled with your face,
"and you could drive off Beachy Head and you'd commit suicide
"and no-one would blame you for it.
"And you could die if you wanted.
"And all birds would eat your corpse, bit by bit.
"And now they're going, 'Oh, don't do that.
"'W hat if it annoys a Pakistani? '
"It's political correctness gone mad, Stew.
"In the old days you could get up,
"sing the Horst Wessel song,
"the song of the Nazi Party in the '30s,
"go out of the house, go to the motorway,
"lie down where all steamrollers are and be crushed to death,
"and while you were dying, recite a Mike Reid routine from the '70s
"as loud as you like,
"and then all worms and rats would eat you and shit it all out
"in the shape of an anti-Semitic symbol.
"And now they're going, 'Oh, don't do that. What if it annoys queers? '
"It's political correctness gone mad."
Now...
...I would love to have taken some time
to look at the other side of the political correctness argument,
the right-wing libertarian position,
but we're in a licensed venue, we've overrun,
there's all sorts of rules and regulations here, so...
I'm afraid we're gonna have to stop.
It's political correctness gone mad.
(APPLAUSE AND CHEERING)
(CAR HORN PLAYS DIXIE)
(HORN TOOTS)