The Telegraph is promoting an obscure petition calling for “right wing” comedian Andrew Lawrence to be banned from the BBC after he joked that feminists could kill themselves to achieve gender equality.
Mr Lawrence, who is well-known for his politically incorrect comedy, tweeted on Monday:
This prompted a small group of people to sign a change.org petition calling for the BBC to impose a blanket ban on him for “joking about women committing suicide”.
It states:
“Whilst humour can take many forms and is a matter of subjective taste it is a crossed boundary to incite others to take their own lives.
“Some feminists declare themselves such as a retaliation to having experienced male violence. This might sometimes lead to suicidal feelings. That is not a matter of fun. Dead women are not funny. Raped women are not funny.
“2 women a week are killed at the hands of men, some of whom say they love them. Those women may have suffered feelings of suicide as they fought to stay alive.”
At the time of writing, only 88 people have signed yet The Telegraph has dedicated an article to it, and highlighted the angry responses to Mr Lawrence’s tweet.
The comedian has regularly criticised the state of the UK comedy, accusing other comedians of being slaves to politically correct conformity.
He came to prominence last year when he wrote on Facebook criticising comedians who seem to do nothing more than joke about UKIP.
“Can’t help but notice increasingly, a lot ‘political’ comedians cracking cheap and easy gags about UKIP, to the extent that it’s got hack, boring and lazy very quickly,” he said.
“Particularly too much moronic, liberal back-slapping on panel shows like Mock The Week where aging, balding, fat men, ethnic comedians and women-posing-as-comedians, sit congratulating themselves on how enlightened they are about the fact that UKIP are ridiculous and pathetic.”
“Can’t say that I’m a UKIP supporter,” he added, “But I can see why other people are, and I don’t disrespect them for it.”
He insists, however, that his criticisms of political correctness do not make him “right wing”:
He made the same point in an article for The Times in August, saying:
“In truth, having this label “right-wing” placed on me is less a reflection of my comedy, and more because in recent years the stand-up industry, always openly leftist since its “alternative comedy” rebirth in the 1980s, is currently going through an ugly phase of being very militant and dogmatic in its dissemination of that ideology.”
He does not seem too fazed by his most recent criticism, however, tweeting:
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