...says Stewart Lee

‘Stewart Lee has challenged the notion that comics doing offensive material are in any way ‘brave’.

In a newspaper article, Lee highlighted recent controversies such as Sachsgate and Ricky Gervais using the word ‘mong’ to argue the line between brave and stupid is a thin one.

And he stated that even though it could be considered ‘brave’ of Gervais to mock those with mental problems – it would be better if he didn’t.

Lee wrote: ‘A confusion seems to exist in your minds that a comedian is somehow validated by doing material that you perceive as being "brave".

‘Lenny Bruce was brave to challenge orthodoxies in front of audiences peppered with FBI agents aiming to arrest him. Chubby Roy Brown is not brave to sing a pro-golliwog song in front of loads of people who, from the YouTube clip, seem to be all disproportionately enthusiastic about golliwogs.’

‘Was Russell Brand "brave" to have joshed the old man about goth sex?,’ Lee asked in the Observer piece. ‘Was Bernard Manning "brave" to be racist in the 70s?’

He said that today some people ‘think the bravery of a comedian is measured by their willingness to tackle the hot potato of Islam’ – but added that Islam is not the comedy taboo it’s imagined to be, stating: ‘Many stand-ups... do make informed jokes about Muslims.’

‘So where can the would-be brave comedian go to prove his bravery?’ Lee asks – before referring to Gervais’s claims he is working on sitcom about Derek Noakes, a man with a mental condition similar to Down's syndrome Last month, Gervais wrote on his blog: ‘Yes, I am writing the sitcom and maybe a movie of Derek.’

But Lee said: ‘Morgana Robinson's eponymous C4 series featured Gilbert, a foolish "special needs" boy and his disabled friends, but it looks as if the glamorous comedienne's bravery is about to be eclipsed by Gervais'.

‘Gervais's fans have already praised his brave reclamation of the word "mong" last month, but his decision to make comedy about the mentally handicapped more explicitly may be the heroic multimillionaire actor-writer-director's bravest yet.

‘It would, doubtless, be brave for Gervais to pursue his Derek Noakes sitcom. It would be braver for him to staple his penis to a wolf. And braver still for him to run into a threshing machine, pushing children in wheelchairs in before him.

‘But watching Gervais's Derek Noakes on YouTube, I imagined feral children trailing real Dereks around supermarkets, chanting "Derek Derek", as they doubtless would were the series to be made, and wondered if, sometimes, discretion is not the better part of valour.’

Published: 13 Nov 2011