Comic 'publicly demeaned staff'

Jim Davidson has urged his fans to lobby a theatre that banned him after he ‘publicly insulted’ its staff and refused to accept its policy on wheelchair users.

The 57-year-old comic posted an email from the Norwich Theatre Royal on his website yesterday, which explained why they refused to book him because of his personal behaviour.

Chief executive Peter Wilson quoted from an internal report of Davidson’s last appearance at the venue, in August 2004. It said: ‘Very rude to staff. Arguments over figures, drinks etc, and personal comments that are not acceptable.

Wilson added: ‘From the show report of that evening it is plain that you publicly insulted and demeaned my front of house colleagues, offensively queried the house returns, and refused to accept our policy on wheelchair user/

‘I’m sorry of course that your many fans – and I’m not for a moment questioning your popularity as an entertainer – have to travel to catch your act. But I prefer not to have you in our theatre because there is not a single person here who finds this sort of behaviour acceptable.’

On his blog, Davidson claimed he was being singled out because of the nature of his comedy, saying: ‘I think the bottom line is I talk about things they’re not happy about, politically.’

Davidson already has a poor reputation for his treatment of wheelchair users after refusing to appear in Plymouth in 2003, after theatre bosses refused to move the disabled people out of the front row and on to the sidelines. He said he often took the mickey out of people in the front row and he didn’t want to be seen to be targeting wheelchair users.

Meanwhile Davidson has pulled the plug on a gig in Ayr next week in the face of poor ticket sales.

Fewer than 100 tickets were reportedly sold for his gig at the Ayr Town Hall, the headline event in the Septembayr festival. However, the comic said he was unaware his booking was part of any festival, and was furious when reading about the box-office woes in the press – saying it was the festival organisers’ job to promote and advertise the show.

He blogged: ‘I read in the Scottish Sun today that a man I’ve never heard of said he might cancel me next week.  This is hardly the thing to do if you’re trying to sell tickets for your festival.  I have had no choice but to cancel something I didn’t know I was in in the first place.

‘Being part of a festival means that you leave the advertising and the booking to the festival organisers, who I have never heard of.  There is no box office number to phone for tickets.’

Published: 2 Sep 2011