Channel 4 exec hits back at protesters

Channel 4's head of comedy has mounted a robust defence of the forthcoming comedy script set in the Irish famine – saying attempts to gag the writer are 'appalling'.

Phil Clarke said he would defend Dublin writer Hugh Travers against protesters who wanted to silence him before the show, Hungry, had even been created.

'I'm determined to allow Hugh to explore this subject,' he said. 'It's been misreported. We're not doing a series. We're not even doing a pilot. We've only commissioned a script. But I will protect his right as an artist to explore the subject. But the idea that he can't even begin to write I find appalling.'

Clarke, pictured, was speaking a debate on comedy and censorship held as part of the London Irish Comedy Festival, where he was challenged over the project.

Protestor Austin Harney had demanded: 'A full consultation of the Irish community needs to be made before we make a comedy that could offend Irish people.'

Harney, of campaign organisation Campaign for the Rights and Actions of Irish Communities (Craic), said the comedy industry had a duty under the Equality Act to protect people from discriminatory practice or outright prejudice.

He cited the withdrawal of Love Thy Neighbour and The Black & White Minstrel Show to reinforce his point that broadcasters recognise their work could cause offence, saying: 'It's about TV channels having good grace to honour different sections of society around Britain.

'I greatly believe in comedy and find comedy great. I don't find Blackadder at all offensive. I personally didn't find Father Ted offensive. But I've got to say we've got to draw the line here [at Hungry].

'Why not make comedy about Negro slavery? Why not make comedies about the Holocaust? And I'm not going to be laughing at hundreds of thousands of people looking like skeletons or somebody throwing his dead child on the counter because he can't afford a coffin. Because that's what happened.'

Debate chairman Steve Moore – a strategic adviser to Channel 4 – said Harney was getting 'worked up about something that [he] hadn't actually seen'.

But Harney replied: 'Why make a comedy about the famine? There's lot of other issues you can make a comedy about. I mean that's outrageous. Isn't it about time that Irish people stop being insulted like this? A Punch cartoon about what the Irish look like during the famine. That's how they were stereotyped in 1843. The Neanderthal Irishman. And that continued up to Fawlty Towers with O'Reilly's men. O'Reilly the village idiot and the other employee who's a Neanderthal.'

Comedian Grainne Maguire added: 'Isn't there a massive difference between The Black & White Minstrel Show – which was written by, I presume, white people – and a sitcom about Irish history and written by an Irish person? So this is an Irish person writing a sitcom about Irish history.'

Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive of Index on Censorship, moved the debate on by saying she found Jim Davidson and Dapper Laughs offensive, but added: 'It doesn't mean that I think that that ought to be censored in any way.

'I think someone like Dapper Laughs is an offensive comedian but I don't think that there needs to be professional or government intervention to have those types of comedians or that type of comedy removed.'

She added that we've got to be 'very careful not to conflate the idea of certain language, and particularly comedy, being harassment and it being offensive. Because that's what is increasingly happening, I think, in the UK.

'[We're] moving to a position where people are saying things are offensive to them and that that's harassment but what they mean is it's just offensive or "I found it a bit insulting" or "I found it unpleasant".

'There are many, many things I find offensive but it's very different to talk about that as harassment or incitement to violence. The right to offend people is protected and should be celebrated.'

Eddie Doyle, head of comedy at RTE, said that the risk of offence was an intrinsic part of what a public broadcaster should be doing.

'There's two types of it,' he told the audience at London's Comedy Cafe. 'Sometimes there's stuff about what the public value. So we'll put out programmes that the people like. So, as with Mrs Brown's Boys, we sometimes go too far with taste and decency but there's a clear audience there for that.

'And there's a second type of public value in broadcasting, I think, which is material that adds to the public sphere, or adds to public discourse, which is maybe challenging for people but that's its function. And that's the function of comedians: to test the frontiers of what is sayable in society.'

Doyle added that he would sign off on a joke about clerical sex abuse or abortion if it 'were making a political point that made it more impactful', but added: 'Religion is hairy. We've wrestled with that a lot. The rule we've applied at RTE is that it's OK to joke at the expense of an institution or an organised religion – clerical abuse isn't all that funny but it's reasonable to satirise that – but once you get into the territory of mocking the central tenets of a particular faith and holding that up for ridicule then you're edging towards incitement to hatred.'

- by Liam Lonergan

Published: 22 Feb 2015