Peter Rhodes on comedy, conscription and the struggle to get jokes back on telly
“While Sunak may not be one of the best prime ministers, he's one of the best people to have been prime minister.” Fraser Nelson's double-edged tribute in the Daily Telegraph.
The BBC's director of comedy, Jon Petrie, says he wants more sitcoms that are “laugh out loud” comedies with “a high joke rate.” Good luck with that.
The problem is that comedy reflects the society it lives in. The golden age of TV sitcoms was created in a world where jokes and joke-telling were part of the culture. Just as whistling has gone out of fashion, so has the art of telling jokes. We are wary of saying the wrong thing, mocking the wrong people, revealing the wrong politics. For me, a key moment came years ago when some politically-correct, non-sexist young comic told a joke on telly about washing-up. The punchline was that no matter how you washed the dishes, you were always left with a teaspoon in the bowl. And at that moment I thought, ye gods, if we're reduced to gags about cutlery, the sooner they bring back Les Dawson's mother-in-law, the better. Still waiting.
