Never work with children
5th December 2011Apparently over 20,000 people contacted the BBC to complain about Jeremy Clarkson’s latest outburst. Now, I’m no flag-waver for the bejeaned buffoon, but I think we should cut him some slack this time. After all, most of us know what Clarkson’s for. In short, he was just doing his shtick which, incidentally, earns BBC Worldwide millions in overseas sales.
What’s interesting is why, in this instance, the consensus wasn’t “it’s just Clarkson being Clarkson”. Why the furore? I reckon it’s all because of one word – ‘children’.
Let’s consider first Clarkson’s reference to the execution of public sector strikers. Had he called for them to ‘hanged from the highest yardarm’, to suffer ‘death by a thousand cuts’ or to be ‘hanged, drawn and quartered’, I reckon he would have been home free. Why? Because, despite the awfulness of these acts, they’re archaic; they’re so far removed from our experience that they’re now almost comical. True, he brought it closer to home by suggesting a firing squad, but even here he still had some leeway: the expression ‘being taken out and shot’ is an acceptable exaggeration when we’re moaning about someone’s inadequacies or misdeeds.
But he crossed the line when he suggested that strikers should be shot ‘in front of their children’. Why? Because children and humour has always been a dodgy area. Yes, it’s acceptable to laugh at their ‘You’ve Been Framed’ antics or their verbal infelicities, but that’s about it. A joke which invokes – however ironically – children’s misfortune is likely to be greeted by shocked silence or noisy outrage. So, Jeremy, it pays to consider W. C. Fields’ maxim: “Never work with animals or children”. True he was talking about being upstaged, but the old trope holds good for most aspects of “entertainment”.
