After Jerry Sadowitz: What's happened to comedy?

Can we make - and take - jokes any more?

There have been many headlines and column inches devoted to the ‘woke’ backlash against comedians from Ricky Gervais to Dave Chappelle. But for many, Jerry Sadowitz's cancellation at the Edinburgh Fringe was something of a final straw. Even the Guardian - whilst unconvincingly denying this had anything to do with free speech - was forced to admit that this amounted to a ‘watershed moment in comedy’. As Simon Evans pointed out in spiked, part of what makes the cancellation so galling is that the thrill of being offended is precisely why anyone would go to a Sadowitz show at all. ‘Could his audience really have not known what to expect?’ he asks. Quite.

But Sadowitz isn’t the only one - there is something very concerning about the impact that such controversies are having on wider society’s ability to have a laugh.

For example, office banter has long provided welcome relief from repetitive and boring work. If you were the butt of a joke, a clever response was appreciated and respected. If you couldn’t ‘take a joke’, you were seen as a bit ‘up yourself’. People who didn’t ‘get the joke’ were seen as a bit dim.

But in many workplaces, there is now considerable anxiety about what you can and cannot joke about. Will a misjudged comment, meant purely in jest, get you hauled up before HR? Are we becoming too sensitive? On the other hand, some would argue that workplace banter has long been used as a form of bullying – as embodied in the character of Chris Finch in Gervais’s well-observed breakthrough show, The Office. So, what’s the balance?

We’re going to be exploring this issue in depth at the Battle of Ideas festival, with a panel discussion titled ‘Can we take a joke’? In it, we’re going to explore whether, in a climate of cancel culture and gratuitous offence-seeking, we can still tell jokes - and take them. We’ll also look at where the line is between lightening the mood and being unprofessional to your colleagues, and whether mercilessly ribbing is what knits a friendship group together or makes people feel ‘excluded’. And also, of course, the impact on stand-up comedy.

This is also an important session for us because we’re working with Comedy Unleashed (as we have done for some years) who have done so much to push back against the censorious and shrill mood in comedy circles. Their tagline - ‘the home of free-thinking comedy’ - perfectly captures the idea that comedy and true freedom of thought are inextricably bound together.

The great news for you all is that you don’t even have to wait for the festival to get a slice of their free-thinking comedy. They are just about to head out on tour. In a sign of the times, even the act of daring to tour with free thinking comedy has provoked a backlash of its own. This short film from comedian Leo Kearse about this storm in a chamber pot is spot on.

I’d urge you all to check out the tour dates and line-ups. The tour will run from 7 September to 17 November, and with shows selling fast now is the time to get your ticket. Not only will you be guaranteed a laugh, but you’ll also be doing your bit to kick back against those who would make all our lives duller and more austere by banning jokes.

This tour is for everyone who enjoys free-thinking comedy!

Following Jerry Sadowitz's cancellation at the Edinburgh Fringe, we need comics to be free to perform to open-minded audiences, without looking over their shoulders.

7 September – 17 November

Tickets, line-ups and dates: https://comedyunleashed.co.uk/on-tour/