Lord Alli
I have previously drawn attention to the fact that speeches moving the loyal address at the start of a session tend to be humorous. When Lord Alli seconded the motion in 2002, he explained the background:
‘When I was summoned to see my noble friend the Leader of the House, I was quite taken aback by his request. I found myself agreeing to speak almost immediately without asking what it might entail. I asked him how I should approach the task. He advised me that I should make it personal, light-hearted and, I thought he said, controversial. But on reflection I could well have got that wrong. He advised me that my humour should be in good taste and appropriate to the occasion.
Having come from a television background, I naturally turned to the BBC policy guidelines relating to humour. Unfortunately, the only copy available in your Lordships’ Library was dated 1948. Neverthleless, I found them most enlightening. The document states:
“Humour must be clean, and untainted. Well known vulgar jokes (e.g. the brass monkey), even ‘cleaned up’, are not normally admissible, since the humour is only evident if the vulgar version is known. There is an absolute ban on the following—jokes about lavatories, effeminacy in men, immorality of any kind. There should be no suggestive references to honeymoon couples, chambermaids, fig leaves, ladies underwear e.g. ‘winter draws on’, animal habits, e.g. rabbits, lodgers, or commercial travellers. Extreme care should be taken in dealing with references to, or jokes about, pre-natal conditions, (e.g. ‘His mother was frightened by a donkey’). The vulgar use of such words as ‘basket’ should be avoided”.
I tried to keep those rules uppermost in my mind when deciding what to say.’
Splendid – I always worry that I might accidentally make vulgar use of the word “basket” 🙂
Dear Lord Norton,
I trust Messrs Ross and Brand will be getting sent a copy of this guidance!
Howridiculous.
I was listening to a programme last night about CITES – the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species…
Perhaps this might be extended to afford some protection to that rare bird of bright plumage, the ‘Russell Brand’. It has been rather badly behaved of late, but that doesn’t, to me, seem sufficient justification for it to be hunted to extinction…
All humour has the capacity to offend. I wouldn’t enjoy a night in front of ‘Jerry Springer : The Opera’. But I’m not sure I want to live in a world where people are ‘sacked’ or ‘banned’ from the stage because they occasionally upset people.
Others may well take a different view. I find Simon Hoggart and Armando Iannucci highly amusing and help to give a few laughs on life’s highway – goodness knows we need it at the moment. But no doubt they have upset one or two people in their time.
One of the most bizarre comments I saw about this whole farrago was someone who suggested that with the ‘credit crunch’ and ‘people losing their jobs’, how on earth did they think this kind of thing was funny ?
Gosh, had we gone down that route, can you imagine the response to ‘Flannagan and Allen’ during World War 2 ? “Stop that bloody song & dance will ‘ya – there are bombs dropping all over London ! ”
Let us keep a bit of a sense of perspective here, folks…
Thanks for the comments. As you variously touch upon, the extract shows how perceptions of good taste change over time and that there is always going to be controversy over where to draw the line. I like to think that in the Lords humour is appreciated – as I hope my various posts on the wit of Westminster demonstrates – but we keep within acceptable bounds. If we didn’t, I suspect the Hansard writers would find some way of bringing it back within acceptable limits!