The funny side of being cancelled

Douglas Is Cancelled, the new drama series on ITV, should come with a trigger warning – for me, anyway. Watching it brought back memories of my own cancellation six years ago, which I found so traumatic that I lost half a stone. Admittedly, the middle-aged white man at the centre of this drama (Hugh Bonneville) only has one position to lose – he’s a television presenter – whereas I lost five. But apart from that the similarities are uncanny. Did the writer, Steven Moffat, read the 5,000-word piece I wrote about my experience? Or do all cancellations follow the same pattern?

Douglas’s trial begins when someone on Twitter says they overheard him telling a sexist joke at a wedding. They don’t say what the joke was, and he was drunk at the time so can’t remember, but everyone assumes the worst and his career is soon in jeopardy. Before long, the joke is being described by those trying to help him, like his agent, as not merely sexist, but misogynistic, forcing Douglas to correct them: ‘It was sexist, goddamnit!’ Needless to say, this doesn’t make things better – something I discovered too. One of my sins was making a sexist joke and it was spun into something far worse. Left-wing women would take to Twitter, demanding I be fired, and then add #MeToo, as if I was morally indistinguishable from Harvey Weinstein. Protesting that I hadn’t actually raped anyone did nothing to help.

Like me, Douglas assumes it’s just a storm in a teacup and the media circus will quickly move on. But the opposite happens – a terrible symbiosis occurs between social and print media, with each amplifying what the other is saying in a kind of reverse echo chamber effect, whereby every time an allegation bounces between the two it gets louder.