To say I am not a great admirer of the alleged comedian Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown would not be inaccurate. I do not find him funny. It is not just his racism, homophobia and his all round bigotry that I don’t approve of. I don’t get him, in the same way that I don’t get Victoria Wood. I would not cross the road to see Brown perform, but I wouldn’t ban him either. Not everyone agrees with me on that one.
Kirkby-in-Ashfield’s local council, who previously accepted a booking for Brown at their Festival Hall, have now pulled the gig, deeming it ‘inappropriate’. How dare they?
One of the things people surely have to accept in a so called free country is that they have no right not to be offended. It doesn’t matter whether they are offended by cartoons of a fictional prophet or by a comedian with a more than dubious sense of humour. You do not threaten people or ban them for offensive views: you need to debate them and out-argue them, or you just ignore them and put up with it.
For instance, I am highly offended by a lot of people and things. Katie Hopkins, Ukip, the scouse bloke in the Coral ads on the telly, George Galloway to name but a few. I try my very best to ignore them, for sure, but I wouldn’t try and ban them. Well, apart from the scouse bloke in the Coral ads, anyway.
I confess I have not seen a great deal of Brown other than, some years ago, in a video and some You Tube clips. He waltzes on stages to an audience which chants ‘You fat bastard’ repeatedly, after which the man himself leads the chanting. Then he swears a lot, takes the piss out of people and that, in a nutshell, is Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown. Now if I want to hear bad language, I will visit my local football club and I’ll probably hear some better jokes, too, but it’s my choice.
I wonder why the council booked him in the first place. They must have had an inkling of what he was all about. It is not a state secret that his language is not always pure Oxford English, everyone knows he goes after easy targets. So, what were they thinking about?
It’s completely wrong that Brown’s show has been pulled. Unless he is doing something against the law, then the booking should have been fulfilled and a tinpot local council has no right telling someone what they can and cannot see. Let the public decide whether they want to spend an evening with the not too great man himself.
The fact that Brown is playing a modest concert hall in a place I have never heard of suggests he is not exactly at the height of his popularity. A bit of notoriety will do him no harm at all, probably boosting attendances. See what you’ve done, Kirkby-in-Ashfield council? You f***ing bunch of b*stard c*nts.
