Standing back stage in the huge inflatable upside down cow that is the Udderbelly it was very hard to remember I was in London and not in Edinburgh. I was discussing the Fringe with insane Australian potty-mouth Brendon Burns and talked about it being "here". Even though I had come on the tube, and was in the shadow of the London Eye as I walked into the Udderbelly compound, the human brain clearly can't cope with the concept of a familiar location being able to be deflated and transported across the country. I was standing backstage in the Udderbelly, talking to comedians and although all logic said I was still in London, somehow all logic also said I was in Edinburgh and if I walked out the front door I would be greeted with hundreds of people drinking in the al fresco bar and then be able to walk beyond them and go to the Gilded Balloon to buy a crepe. Of course in just three months time that will be the case (which is frightening enough - 100 days away from my 19th Fringe), but how strange that the mind is so easily tricked. But then clearly it operates under the assumption that buildings don't move around. And maybe it would be stranger if it didn't have a problem when they do.
I was there to take part in a debate about offensiveness in comedy, which was a bit of a sprawling affair as it turned out and although it threw up some interesting points I think this might be the last time I take part in something like this. Only because I think I've said it all already and I am not sure I need to defend what I do. Sometimes people get offended by what I do and sometimes that is a good thing - I don't mind offending someone from the BNP for example, or indeed someone who is a liberal or religious or whatever and not prepared to even consider they may be wrong. But I do my best to make what I am doing have a point and to be challenging for a reason, rather than gratuitously. But sometimes it is good to be offended, as long as it promotes discussion and thought about an issue, even if ultimately you realise that what you think is right (or as right as anything can be). Not to say everyone should be allowed to do whatever they want in any circumstances, but ultimately I think it's up to the individual to decide what they personally will view and to try to avoid the things that they don't want to see (if it offends them that much).
Paul Bassett-Davies who was hosting the event came up with an interesting point to end on about a series of photos that had been in the Guardian recently of the last two days of the photographer's father's life (he was dying of cancer). One reader felt that this was an awful and inappropriate thing to have put in a newspaper as their parents had died of cancer, but another thought it was a beautiful and moving record and their parents had also died of cancer. So should the photos have not been shown because they offended one person? Or does the fact that someone else was moved and made happier by them negate the offence? For my money it would be awful to deprive the second person the happiness the photos gave them because the first person was made sad. Even if the second person was in a tiny minority. The first person can turn the page and move on (and in fact I think the fact they were given a negative feeling by the photos doesn't diminish them as art - it's not always bad to be made to confront things that make you unhappy, even if you don't want to). But art cannot be ruled by majority feelings because if it was most works of art would be censored and destroyed. Some works of art leave me cold, some upset me and some I like. But I don't think the things I don't like should be destroyed or hidden away, especially if they are giving other people (even a minority) some pleasure. You, as an individual have to make some choices about what you want to see and think and do. Sometimes you will have to confront things you don't like or be confronted by them, but that is life isn't it? And maybe it's good to confront people with unpleasant truths sometimes if they are drifting around just trying to ignore them. But that doesn't give people the right to censor or censure something that rubs them up the wrong way.
As I walked home I came up with something that is close to being a good analogy, (because obviously there still are some limits to art - you can't shoot a stranger in the face and then claim it was a joke or performance art). It's like someone who is lactose intolerant calling for all milk products to be banned completely because milk has a bad effect on them, even if loads of people can enjoy milk and cheese and maybe yoghurt (I'm not saying that I would be enjoying the yoghurt more than anyone else). That would be crazy. It's up to the lactose intolerant person to do their best to avoid milk.
But if someone started selling poisonous milk that gave everyone who drank it the shits (whether deliberately or accidentally), then maybe there would be some call for some outside body to come in and do something about it and stop that milk being sold - or at least insist it was only sold to people who actively wanted to drink milk that would give them the shits.
Perhaps it's not that great an analogy in the end. But just because you are intolerant doesn't mean that everyone has to be the same as you. You can avoid milk if you wish, but you have no right to tell me which dairy products I can and can't consume and if I want to bath in yoghurt (I am not saying I do, it's just an example) then you have no right to stop me just because you don't want to do that. Or because you find a fat man splashing around in a tub full of milk that has been bacterially fermented distasteful. I am not forcing you to watch me. Or to lick the congealed yoghurt out of my anal cleft. But if we both want to do that, then it's no one's business but our own.
I don't want to do that though.
I may have gone off message here.
Remember if you want to get your name in the
Christ on a Bike programme then you have to donate by close of play on the 20th. And that is the cut off the highest donation to win all my Hitler Moustache stuff. There's a good chance of being added in if you donate in the next week or so as the programme is still being put together, but no guarantee. So do it now! Thanks to all of you who have donated already. We crossed the £5000 mark this evening, which is awesome. You really are the best.
