The Agony of a Misfired Joke

When I was about ten, my friend was in the kitchen, and he found one of those pie-chimney things: He held it upside-down and said to me 'Look, an Irish wine glass'. I launched into a long tirade about the oppressed people of Ireland, and how racist it was to say a thing like that, until, in the end, he broke down in tears. 'I'm sorry' he said, the tears rolling down his cheeks. 'All I ever wanted to do was make people laugh'. And I sort of feel the same way now, about Daniel O'Reilly. Last night he appeared on Newsnight, to announce the permanent retirement of Dapper Laughs: I believe his contrition. I have written before about Dapper Laughs (here and here, if you're interested) and I always felt there was more intelligence to Daniel O'Reilly than there was to Dapper Laughs. And what I saw last night confirmed to me that he is someone who got swept away on a tsunami of success, before finally being pulled up, and forced to realise the horror of the monster he had spawned. No comedian in decades has caused so much debate. An open letter was sent to him, signed by 44 comedians, decrying his misogynistic material. And now they have won. Dapper is no more. I didn't sign the letter (I wasn't asked to either, mind you, I mean, I don't want to go making assumptions or anything) but if I had been asked, I don't know if I would have signed it. I am not quite so eager to cast the first stone. I can't pretend I have never made an error of judgment when trying to make people laugh. I did, spectacularly, a couple of years ago when I put a piece on Youtube. I had been doing various sketches where I was pretending to be the only person in the UK who was excited about the Olympics (no-one was, before they started). I was sick of the marketing and the PR spin around it all, and this homage to the mascot Wenlock was its climax. It's just that I'd momentarily forgotten that at the time, I was working on BBC Local Radio. As a (pseudo) journalist. I was summoned to the office the next morning, was told I was in breach of contract, that I had brought the BBC into disrepute, was asked if I had some self-destructive streak or something. I cried. No, no, I said. None of those. I just saw an opportunity to do something I thought was funny. And it was funny. It was just that at that moment in time, I had the wrong audience. Betty in Halifax would *not* have enjoyed it. (I bet she would, secretly). Daniel O'Reilly was not performing as 'Daniel O'Reilly'. It was a character. It was a character that had attracted the wrong audience. An ugly audience. In a clip from his live show, Dapper says 'You can't rape women', to which a man in the audience yells 'Yes, you can!' to hoots of laughter. I don't think O'Reilly's reply of 'Geezer' was an endorsement. I think it was the way I, a 41-year-old British man, say 'Dude'... It was a desperate attempt to say 'seriously... Come off it'. It would have been highly commendable for Dapper to have said 'That is a wholly unacceptable attitude, and I will not continue this show until you retract that statement and apologise'. It also would have been the end of the show, and, given the demographic of the audience, quite possibly the beginning of the glass-hurling. I don't know what else he could possibly have done in that situation. I don't know what I would have done. In fact, he followed the advice given by @Natt, and went further, trying to turn the awfulness into an overblown pantomime, saying 'This one's dying for a rape'. No-one can take this remark seriously. And if we have reached a point in society where the audience *is* taking that seriously, we can't blame O'Reilly for single-handedly bringing us to that point. We know Doug Stanhope doesn't mean it when he's asking to hear the story about the time his friend 'kick-fucked a girl with cerebral palsy'. Is it, then, fair to judge O'Reilly by the response from his audience, rather than what he himself is saying? I don't know. I know that Dapper Laughs' online messages and videos have gone beyond the pale. I am not going to pretend for a second that they were acceptable. I think O'Reilly was drunk on the character's success. I think he is sober now. Bill Hicks talked about his parents lamenting his use of cuss-words. His defence was that if Bob Hope played the same venues, he'd be every bit as foul-mouthed. I don't know where O'Reilly started out performing, but I can tell you that he almost certainly went down a damn sight better than I would have done doing, say, a well-observed distillation of Panorama in 90 seconds. And on that parental note... It doesn't sound like O'Reilly's dad is quite the comedy mentor my father is. He's had to punch his way up through the ranks. And, as Dapper, it worked. For a while. He isn't a natural Guardian-reading, middle-class type. And perhaps that is why we didn't forgive him. Unlike, say, Jonathan Ross... It's also partially because we don't know who Daniel O'Reilly is, and therefore we can't distinguish between the two. He could immediately go on tour, with his Too-Dangerous-For-TV show. But he's chosen not to. I'm not trying to be an apologist for him. I understand why people were upset. But however angry his stuff has made you, I would suggest that we cut the guy some slack now. He has nothing. Nothing at all. Apart from some raw comedic talent. I still maintain he is a gifted performer. What he needs, really, is a mentor. And quite a lot of counselling. I'm happy to volunteer as the former. Once I'd made my friend cry for his racist pie-crust chimney joke, I can't say I felt particularly great about myself. I felt like I'd crushed what was, however misguided, a perfectly commendable intention - to cheer somebody's day up a bit. Daniel O'Reilly had the same intention. He just failed on a spectacular scale. And if he's truly contrite, then maybe we could lay down the righteousness for a bit and show him some compassion. Chin up, Daniel. It'll be ok.

CHANGE TO THE ADVERTISED SCHEDULE

Almost exactly a month has passed since I wrote my piece about Dapper Laughs.

And it turns out I was wrong.

It's sad. It's sad that someone who I think possesses a true gift for comedy chooses to use it in such a poorly-considered way. It's a bit like watching Anakin Skywalker's difficult teenage years. Only it's more serious.

I don't have a lot to say that hasn't been said, much more brilliantly than me, by +Nathaniel Tapley (@Natt to normal people who don't use Google+ so much) who wrote this fantastic article.

I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt. I don't like to condemn people before I've seen evidence of their wrongdoing. And I have now seen enough when it comes to Dapper Laughs.

I still maintain there is something in his show which has merit. There is something in him which has merit. I'm not trying to get all Christian or anything, but I do believe he has talent. But he needs to sort out his act (or perhaps more crucially, almost everything he says and does that isn't in his ITV2 show). He is intelligent enough to know this - this may be why he is so angry about criticism. People are often at their most angry when something has touched a nerve.

The show is a triumph, then, it seems to me, of production over performer - a rare win. Dapper Laughs had a very smart team behind him on that show. They brought out the absolute best in him. Sadly, though, I think he has squandered an opportunity many people would receive with a great deal more humility.

So long, Daniel. Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.

PLATFORM ALTERATION

‘...And God Wept’, is, I believe, the generally-accepted suffix to the news that Dapper Laughs’ new comedy vehicle launched on ITV2 this week.

I’d read previews, from people in whom I have an unshakable faith, telling me to expect something really very dreadful indeed. I saw Vine clips made by Dapper himself - the very Vines which got him the commission in the first place - and almost vomited with despair.

So I sat down to watch his debut show on ITV2 fully prepared to enjoy my 24-minute hate.

Except, I didn’t. Enjoy the hate, I mean. What I enjoyed… was the show. I… I don’t know quite how to say this - I enjoyed Dapper Laughs.

My arms slowly unfolded, and I smirked, then smiled, then found myself laughing out loud.

Here’s the thing. Dapper Laughs might well be the most abominable thing ever to have hit our screens since Alf Garnett or Jim Davidson. But it might - it might, I need to see more - be one of the most brilliantly nuanced bits of character acting we have seen in a long, long time.

Such was our indignation at this little upstart chauvinist prick getting his own series, I suspect we might have been hoodwinked. I don’t think Dapper Laughs is wanting us to laugh with him, as we all originally thought. We’re meant to laugh at him.

The problem is not what Dapper is. It’s where he is. Putting a brilliantly-observed spoof of manufactured reality TV, featuring a generous portion of lad culture on ITV2 is akin to putting The Day Today on Sky News. It has left us too confused as to whether it’s real fake reality or fake fake reality. And I think it’s the latter (I think… I may have to draw a diagram).

And there is the hard-to-counter problem of the fact that, as with Alf Garnett, the stupid fuckwit misogynistic cockheads who he is lampooning so flawlessly are probably clasping him to their spray-tanned bosom as being One Of The Lads. Which is where the problem of where it’s being broadcast creeps in.

When Lee Nelson debuted on BBC3, no-one was in any doubt that here we were watching a character for us to laugh at and treat with derision. Because if Lee Nelson had actually been Lee Nelson, there is no way in this universe that the BBC would have gone anywhere near him with a barge pole. If Dapper Laughs had been on BBC3, I think we would have approached Dapper Laughs differently, given the tacit respectability that comes from a commission from Auntie Beeb. As it is, we’re left with this (perhaps deliberately) ambiguous phenomenon of seeing someone who at face value seems to be the average fodder of shows like TOWIE, taken to its logical extreme.

But I think it is more than that. The show is based on a makeover of a slobbish bloke, at whom we are invited to laugh - cruel perhaps, in the way that most makeover shows are. But the bloke is a brilliant performer, with some great lines and a honed sense of timing and delivery. He is not a punter. Definitely not. And the joke is on Dapper at the end as the slob makes some headway talking to a girl in a bar, going against all of Dapper’s advice.

I know I am flying in the face of Grace Dent and many other amazing people who I greatly admire, and yes, yes, if he was being, say, racist in the same way as he was being sexist it would be completely unacceptable… But those kinds of ‘geezers’ are unacceptable in the way he is spoofing, and shows like Take Me Out are deeply sexist, and yet enjoy being in mainstream media (on ITV and, well, ITV2…).

If this is a spoof (and I think it is) then what’s shocking is that it’s so believable. Because we’re too accustomed to this kind of language. Everywhere. And if he played the part in bolder colours, it would turn into something else - a sneering caricature that, in a snobbish way laughs at chavs.

Like Dapper’s creator, Daniel O’Reilly, I went to a south east London comprehensive school, and I have a character who is not a million miles (although perhaps a generation) away from Dapper Laughs. It is the coping mechanism of someone who has endured that laddish twattery for over a decade of their life. Just occasionally in the show he lets slip the occasional word like ‘joviality’ which betrays that there is more going on under the bonnet than he wants you to believe. Very similarly to Avid Merrion… Another staple of ITV2. And some of whose work I admire very much.

I think O’Reilly’s having a Bubble Bath with us. And I think, just as those people who wrote in to the BBC two decades ago to complain about what a dreadful chat show host Alan Partridge is… I think we’ve been had.