One of the stories I covered on the Andrew Collings show today was about a paedophile who is 40 stone. The tabloid covering the story was furious that because of his excessive weight the man in question had been unable to attend a rehabilitation session because it took place upstairs and he couldn't physically manage to climb the steps. So he'd been let out of prison early as a result.
But I argued that it was probably a good thing he was so massive. He was going to find it very difficult to catch any kids to have sex with at the very least. Even the lame boy from the Pied Piper story could have got away from him. And if there was a child who was too slow to run off from this sluggish pervert, then all they had to do was use the old factually incorrect Dalek trick and go up some stairs and they'd be safe.
I argued that all people convicted of paedophilia should be force-fed until they are 40 stone, then none of them would be able to reoffend. It would also make paedophiles really easy to spot for any concerned parents or vigellante gangs of anti-paedos (those men who are so angry about paedophiles that you start to wonder if there is actually protesting too much and are beating up nonces to make people think they themselves could not be nonces themselves).
This would also have the added advantage of forcing any non-paedophile fat person to go on a diet to avoid being mistaken for a vile perv, which would mean they would live longer. I did make a suggestion on air that I thought it was more likely that anyone who was over 40 stone was probably a paedophile anyway, but I have nothing to back that claim up with and I would like to retract it now.
I think this is genuinely the solution to Britain's paedophile problem and I am going to be writing to Tony Blair to suggest he institutes it before he leaves office. He might want to give John Prescott some warning though.
Later I had a fun gig at Southampton, though about twenty minutes into my set a man in a wheelchair decided to leave. I don't know if I had offended him, or bored him or whether he just needed to get home, but it was a weird distraction. Because partly I was concerned that maybe he was annoyed by my jokes about Heather Mills Mccartney (though he left some time after these) but mainly because to get out he had to use a little wheelchair lift to get up the three steps out of the venue. And it made a huge amount of noise, apparently partly because the man's able-bodied friend had insisted on standing on the lift as well and it had been unable to cope with the weight.
But it was a weird one, because I didn't really want to draw attention to what was happening and it would all have turned into a bit of a Kramer moment if I had started lambasting a man in a wheelchair for leaving. So I tried to ignore it, aware that everyone in the audience could clearly see what was happening and what was going through my mind.
At the end of the gig I decided to refer to the whole thing and my refusal to acknowledge it. I pushed things pretty far, aware that the audience trusted me and understood where I was coming from. And that my discomfort was more about my own hypocrisy than anything else. After all if I believe that all people are equal, surely I should treat a disabled person exactly the same as anyone else and if anyone else had left and made a noise then I would have had a go at them.
I also claimed that because of all the money I have raised for SCOPE I thought I should get a special pass that allows me to use disabled toilets and parking spaces. I'd had to park miles from the venue. Where was the justice in that?
"Maybe he just had to get a bus," a woman had suggested.
"He won't be getting a bus. He'll have a parking space right by the door, the bastard!" I angrily replied.
Well it was all good fun at the time.
I ended by telling the audience that disabled people refer to non-disabled people as the "not yet disabled", which I love. "Yes, I said, one day we'll all be disabled or dead. And that's where I think I should leave it for this comedy gig. You're all going to be disabled or dead!"
The crowd laughed and cheered and clapped me. What a strange job mine is.
