...but not for long

Lee Hurst has briefly been suspended from Twitter over a crude tweet about Greta Thunberg.

The comedian sparked a huge backlash after posting his joke about the 18-year-old environmental activist.

He was temporarily barred from the social media site after posting: ‘As soon as Greta discovers cock, she'll stop complaining about the single use plastic it's wrapped in.’

But his account - which he headlines ‘desperately trying to be relevant’ is now back up and running again.

His initial post provoked outrage with comments such as ‘Lee Hurst talking about a woman just turned 18 and suggesting that all she needs to fix her views is "cock". Misogynistic and outright fucking creepy’; ‘What he tweeted about Greta Thunberg was genuinely unfunny and gross’; and ‘not edgy, not relevant, not funny. Why bother to be offensive? Have you even thought about what you said?’

David Baddiel said: ‘The reason that Lee Hurst is problematic isn't because it carries underneath it a sense that women, as individuals, with political opinions, are erased by male sexual power. It's problematic because it's a shit gag.

‘I know it's not either/or…. I think there is something abusive towards Greta Thunberg – and generally misogynistic – in that joke.’

He added that Hurst shouldn’t be suspended from Twitter over the comment.

It did not go without comment that Hurst was 'sexually insulting a young woman' at a time when the issue of harassment was especially prominent following the death of Sarah Everard.

But Lee defended the joke as ‘funny’ and dismissed complaints as ‘the usual suspects’ taking offence.

But one user said: ‘If you can’t see that what you wrote was disgusting and very creepy then you have a bigger problem than even I thought and the bar was already very low when it comes to you.’

Hurst, 58,  has been a prominent anti-masker on Twitter and earlier this month put his name to a letter complaining that secondary school pupils shouldn’t wear masks in class, alongside the likes of Laurence Fox, Sue Cook, Peter Hitchens,  and Mark Dolan.

Hurst, the father of a three-year-old son  was a TV regular in the 1990s as a team captain on sport panel quiz They Think It’s All Over.

He then started his own comedy club, the Backyard in Bethnal Green, East London, before selling it for £11million when the site was redeveloped into a hotel, incorporating a new venue.

Published: 21 Mar 2021