Chubby Brown banned from performing in Sheffield.

 

Roy 'Chubby' Brown

Over the years, many British comedians have fallen foul to censorship of one sort or another. But rarely was it due to the kind of heresy hunting that we see all too frequently today, which has been dubbed the 'cancel culture'.

Max Miller, who was known as 'The Cheeky Chappie', and regarded as the greatest stand-up comic of his day, frequently got into trouble with the censors for his double entendre and risque jokes. Miller was banned by the BBC in the 1930s and 1950s, which only boosted his popularity and takings at the box office. The English northern comedian, Frank Randle, who also worked the music halls, was frequently banned by the police from performing at venues in Blackpool. In 1952, he was prosecuted on four charges of obscenity and fined £10 on each account. For over twenty years (1969-1989), the comedian Benny Hill, was hugely popular with his 'The Benny Hill Show'. But in 1989, his show was suddenly axed on the grounds that it "was passed its sell-by date.' Yet his shows have been sold to 140 countries and still attract audiences in the billions. Many of us know that show was really cancelled because Hill in the 1980s came under a concerted attack from feminist critics who denounced his comedy as sexist rubbish.

In 2007, the stand-up comedian Bernard Manning, told the Daily Mail that campaigning had had kept him off television for years. He added: "I don't think the Commission for Racial Equality will be holding a wake for me, nor will the Lesbian and Gay Rights lot or the feminists. They will always be banging on about how I was sexist or anti-gay..." Manning thought that the new breed of British comics were as funny as a dose of bird flue and their humour, equivalent to that of a funeral parlour.

One of the latest victims to fall foul of the politically correct brigade, is the 'fat bastard' himself, Roy Chubby Brown. 'Chubby' or Royston Vasey, has been banned from performing his live show at the Sheffield City Hall, on the grounds that his comedy does not reflect Sheffield's inclusive values. Just why it requires a ban, is intriguing because if you don't like his comedy or think it beyond the pale, then you don't have to pay to see him. It is as simple as that! One suspects that 'Chubby' has been banned because he's hugely popular and considered a funny man, in spite of his disgusting and vulgar humour, that panders to base instincts. 

The new culture secretary, best-selling author, Nadine Dorries, believes that comedy is being killed off by 'leftwing snowflakes'. Whether she intends to wage a war on 'woke', remains to be seen. But already she's become the object of ridicule and vitriol. Matthew Anderson, the European culture editor for the New York Times, wrote: "Germany's culture minister is a trained art historian; France's wrote a book on Verdi. The new UK culture secretary...ate ostrich anus on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.'

Although comedians may have always been subject to some sort of sanction, it was mainly done by the authorities and not by some self-righteous, self-appointed, cancel culture brigade that we see today. It's said that the Puritans  were the school-masters of the English middle-class, and the English left, is predominantly middle-class. Despite their socialist pretensions, they despise the kind of coarse working-class humour that comedians like Hill, Manning, and Roy Chubby Brown, epitomize. Whether you like Chubby Brown or loathe him, I tend to agree with one critic who said: "Fat bastards like Chubby need us to raise our standard" so as to "defend his audiences right to lower theirs."

At the time of writing, over 38,000 people have signed a petition calling for Chubby to be allowed to perform at the City Hall in Sheffield.