Ah, so this time Jimmy Carr has fallen foul of the increasingly vociferous Down’s Syndrome
lobby. A few weeks back it was Gervais, who used the word ‘mong’, provoking fury among the god-awful bien pensant and the pressure groups. Now Carr has told a joke about those Variety
Club Sunshine Coaches used to take Down’s Syndrome kiddies on trips. ‘Why do they call them variety when the kids all look the same,’ he said.
Not a very good joke at all (but then I don’t find Carr very funny in general). But the response it elicited was funny. Some grandstanding idiot from the Variety Club said Carr should ‘apologise to every disabled child in the country’ and also buy them another coach. A spokesman for a Down’s Syndrome pressure group insisted that jokes shouldn’t make fun of people or mock them. Shouldn’t they? What should they do then, jokes? Be inclusive and not have a punch-line?
The subjects about which one can make jokes reduces seemingly by the day. In the meantime, I’m on the lookout for a joke which is disablist, sexist, racist, homophobic and also offends religious sensibilities all in one line. If it can somehow incorporate Hitler too, so much the better.
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