In Hitler Moustache I discuss the fact that I came up with an evil joke about Madeleine McCann on the day I first had the moustache and wonder whether the moustache was responsible for my evil. I say I don't want to tell the joke as it is "too offensive for public consumption" and then when someone inevitably protests, having made it clear what the subject is, I ask the audience to decide democratically if they want to hear the joke. The overwhelming majority always do. There are usually one or two people brave enough to say they don't wish to hear a joke on that subject, rarely that number might go to about a dozen (allowing me to make a joke that the Tapas Twelve are in tonight). The vote has never been close. Tonight in Reading no one objected at all, which has only happened once or twice before. So I make a show of saying that is democracy in action and often wash my hands of the decisions in a deliberate reference to Pontius Pilate's attempts to shift blame from himself. As with much of the show, the joke is on me as much as anyone else.
I then tell the joke, which is actually not all that offensive and is more about the media coverage if anything. The ultimate punchline is unfavourable and unfair to Madeleine's parents - but less so than the papers and most people have been about them in private. I do not for example, accuse them of murdering their own child. And in some ways one might say the joke is optimistic and if taken at face value innocently hopeful, as in it I merely express the belief that Madeleine is being looked after well by whoever has got her. Which is surely the only hope that is left to her. Surely we must all pray that that is the case because any alternative is extremely unpleasant.
But the joke is in the show to make a point about shifting of blame, about the rule of the mob, about why comedy and evil can be close together and also our ability to laugh in the face of tragedy and evil as well as our right to make our own decisions about what we get to hear, even if we know it is going to be wrong.
I have previously had one complaint about the joke, where the person felt it was made worse by my flagging it up (how can that be? If I had just sprung it on people then that would be less fair and also in this way you actually get the choice not to listen to it - but of course everyone does listen to it, even if they don't want the subject joked about, because they want to hear what I am going to say.
The joke is not one that I have put in the show glibly or for effect. It is an important moment and pays off several times later, not least when I turn on myself for my hypocrisy of criticising Carol Thatcher for saying Golliwog when I have said something equally bad myself.
I have thought hard about it and also think that making the audience responsible for whether the joke gets heard or not is an interesting way to introduce it, which does, to some extent make us equally culpable. And what's astonishing for me is that the audience don't know what the joke will be, just that I consider it to be the most evil thing I've written (which is not true of course) and that it involves Madeleine. They still gleefully cheer, desperate to hear it. It says something about human nature and why democracy can go wrong, but also that we believe in our right not to be patronised or molly-coddled.
If the majority didn't want to hear it I wouldn't tell it. And of course I had no way of knowing that 99% of people would insist of hearing the joke. It's interesting if not ultimately that surprising.
After a really lovely show in Reading tonight, where remember unusually not one person had dared to voice their objection to this unknown evil joke (so were not able to be congratulated by me for being correct), a man came up to me as I signed autographs.
"Great show," he said with a hint of sarcasm and self-righteousness in his voice. "I just want to say that you should not ever make a joke about Madeleine McCann. That was wrong."
I was slightly flabbergasted, "So if you thought that, why didn't you voice your objection to the joke at the time?"
"That's not the point," he told me.
"It's entirely the point. You had the chance to stop it and you didn't take it. That's what the show is all about, standing up for what you believe and taking culpability when you fail to do so. You can't object now after the event. You had the chance to stop it." (I wasn't quite that eloquent)
"Oh very clever," he said without hiding his sarcasm at all this time, "You just can't do that."
I was riled by the man, I admit and my voice went a little bit high as I defended myself with some passion. "Did you even listen to the joke? It wasn't about Madeleine at all really."
"It's not the point. You just can't joke about it. It's wrong."
I explained why it was important for the themes of the show as I had discussed above, but he was only coming back with "Oh yeah, you're very clever," and whilst we both kept our tempers we were similarly riled.
"So it's OK to make an actually very glib joke about having an iPhone stolen being enough of a justification for the Holocaust in which millions of children died, but not the subject that you think is beyond comedy. If you are happy with one, how can you be unhappy with another?"
"Yeah, yeah, you're very clever, aren't you. But I paid for a ticket and that's how I feel."
"You're welcome to feel that way, but it's a shame you didn't make yourself heard when you might have stopped things. It's just like what happened with the BNP."
"You're so clever."
"Yes I am clever," I responded, now properly flustered, though I wish I had just said, "No, I'm not clever. I've just thought very hard about this show and why everything I say is in it."
I know well enough by now that some people hear buzz words and then their brain shuts down and that some people feel that some subjects should not have jokes made about them. And I hope those people will learn not to come to my shows. Because I think that you can make jokes about the Holocaust and child abduction and fascism as long as you come at them from the right place. And it's all there in the show.
It was interesting to have the chat and to think about it on the drive home, because it made me realise how sound and deep this show has become. And it's a show that accepts the issues are complicated and that I don't have the answers. I had actually worried before that the audience all voting so vociferously for the wrong thing actually countered my argument that if we do our democratic duty we don't have to listen to idiots. But of course it's more complicated than that.
And it's just as interesting that this man who didn't want to hear a joke about a subject didn't speak up when he had the chance, but waited until later, thus denying his culpability in exactly the same way as the people whose laziness allowed the BNP in. It was a point I made in the slightly heated exchange, but all I got was a "very clever".
But it wasn't until I was driving home that I started to realise how clever this show is becoming, how it all links up and how it challenges its audience and its performer to consider what is right and wrong. What is too far and what is not.
It's more than just a joke about the media circus that has developed around Madeleine McCann. But if enough people didn't want to hear the joke it wouldn't happen.
Which seems to say a lot about the indignant reaction we seem to get to all controversies at the moment.
