An audit of the BBC’s “comedy” output found that only four out of 364 slots went to comics who openly supported Brexit or the Conservative Party, while 268 went to “brazenly left-wing comedians”.
Fully 74 per cent of the comedians elevated by the public broadcaster, funded by a licence fee which everyone who watches live television must pay or else face fines backed by the threat of imprisonment, went to “woke” comics such as Nish Kumar, according to an audit by the Campaign for Common Sense (CCS) reported by the Mail on Sunday.
Kumar, best known for his work on The Mash Report programme, has used the platform granted to him by the BBC to grace the public with such “comedy” routines as quoting from a report by the Centre for Economic Performance in order to claim that uncontrolled immigration from the European Union under its Free Movement regime is good for the economy.
Another BBC favourite was veteran feminist Jo Brand, who has previously “joked” that left-wing activists should consider throwing battery acid at right-wing figures rather than milkshakes.
“The BBC says it wants to improve the diversity of output. The reality is our comedy shows are awash with ‘woke’ jokes and there is nothing funny about such flagrant bias,” said CCS director Mark Lehain.
“Our research reveals prime-time comedy shows are dominated by comedians who broadly share the same outlook and views on politics, Brexit and Britain and simply don’t reflect the wide range of opinions held by the viewers they seek to entertain,” he continued.
“There are loads of talented comics out there holding small-‘c’ conservative, anti-‘woke’ and pro- Brexit views. The issue is they just aren’t getting booked by the BBC.”
Responding, the BBC insisted that “We don’t analyse our comedy by comparing numbers. We judge it on it being funny, how popular it is and whether it reflects a range of different voices and views.”
How the broadcaster could be reflecting “a range of different voices and views” with only four comedy slots going to comics who openly back the Conservative Party (which has topped the last four general elections) or Brexit (which was supported by a majority of voters in 2016) was not made clear.