...but racism's 'just a joke'

The comic, who built his reputation on near-the-knuckle gags, says joking about child abuse is the last taboo, adding: ‘Them things aren't funny. They're very, very offensive.’

Yet in the same interview, Brown was happy to make racist comments using the offensive term ‘spade’ – but that is dismissed as merely ‘a joke… a bit of patter’.

He told Wales on Sunday he was proud of his blunt-speaking ways, saying he was only reflecting his working-class audience.

‘My type of people - and I know it's wrong and politically incorrect to say it - are working class,’ he said. ‘I entertain the common man,

‘We seem to be on the same wavelength, you know? We, sort of, call a spade a spade, if you know what I mean. Not to their face. Especially when they're holding a knife.’

The 61-year-old added: ‘You know what people say about racial discrimination, they say, “You shouldn't say this, you shouldn't say this’. These people are arseholes as far as I'm concerned.

‘You've just got to get on with it. It's a joke, at the end of the day, all it is, is a bit of patter. I'm not harming anybody by it.’

Brown added that there are jokes he wouldn’t use, including one widely attributed to him.

The myth is that in the early Nineties he caused a storm in his hometown of Middlesbrough, which had been rocked by a child abuse scandal, Out od by opening a show with the line: ‘I'm surprised there's so many of you here - I thought you'd all be at home playing with your kids.’

‘Hand on heart, I've got two children - hand on heart I never said that,’ he said.

Click here to read the full interview.

Published: 15 Jan 2007