'I don't think I regret it...'

Harry Enfield has defended using blackface in his comedy career, saying: ‘I don’t think I regret it.’

And he said he would find it ‘difficult’ if he was told he could never do it again.

The comic says he has previously mimicked several Prime Ministers and said: ’If Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister I would find it difficult that I would not be allowed to play him because of the colour of his skin.’

Enfield was speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning in the wake of the withdrawal of several comedies from streaming services because of blackface. 

‘I’ve done it several times in the past. I’ve played Nelson Mandela in one thing for laughs,’ he said. ‘I did it because this thing had come round from the BBC that we couldn’t do it any more.

‘So I thought who is my hero? Nelson Mandela, who I had the pleasure of meeting once. And what’s the stereotype about black people? At the time there were lots of things in the papers about drugs and stuff so I made hi a drug dealer or peddler of alcopops to children, which I thought was so wrong that it was right.

‘I wouldn’t do it now, but I don’t think I regret it.’

However, he was challenged by fellow comic Ava Vidal,  above, who was also on the programme, who said: ’He looked around at stereotypes of black people and decided to reinforce that and have Nelson Mandela as a drug dealer. Like, why? If you’re going to do comedy why wouldn’t you subvert a stereotype? Why wouldn’t you challenge it? Why would you reinforce it?’

In response, Enfield said: ‘The whole point was to say hoe preposterous it was to have that stereotype.’

He also spoke about portraying an Indian on the acclaimed spoof history of BBC Two, The Story Of The Twos.

Enfield explained: 'It was a sort of shaggy-dog story about the First World War. And I’d just read a book about the Indian regiments in the First World War so I did with a chap who talked like Zia-ul-Haq, General Zia, the old Pakistani dictator who was educated, I think, at Sandhurst. [Actually it was the British Army’s officer training school in Mhow, India].

‘You can judge whether they are funny or not but I think there should be a conversation about it.’

But he did say that minstrel-era blackface fas ‘deeply offensive’

‘Obviously Al Jolson or GH Eliott, who played the "chocolate-coloured coon" in the 1930s, they perpetuated the myth of the "happy negro" who was just very happy to sing under the crack of the whip - the American whip, or the British imperial bayonet - and obviously that’s deeply offensive and always will be.’

That comment prompted presenter Nick Robinson to suggest Enfield was using Eliott’s offensive stage name in context, in an attempt to head off any complaints.

Many still took to Twitter to complain about the term, as well as pointing out that two white men spoke over Vidal’s contributions in a discussion on racism, while Robinson also managed to mispronounce her name several times.

Published: 11 Jun 2020