Recording of a debate at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023 on Sunday 29 October, at Church House, London.
Subscribe to the Academy of Ideas Substack for more information on the next Battle and future events: https://clairefox.substack.com/subscribe
INTRODUCTION
At the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Comedy Unleashed’s show, featuring Graham Linehan, was cancelled because the venue did not ‘support his views’ and his presence would ‘violate their space’. The edgy spirit that used to characterise the Edinburgh Festival Fringe specifically, and stand-up comedy more generally, seems to have evaporated. There was no outcry from comedians attending the festival and very few publicly expressed even the mildest of support for free expression in the arts.
Earlier that year, Nigel Farage was debanked by Coutts, for expressing views that go against the bank’s ‘values’. Despite the bankers themselves having admitted fault, comedian Omid Djalili publicly sided with the elite bank. When comedians see no problem with using the denial of banking services as a form of punishment for holding certain views, how can they claim that they are ‘punching up’?
Why do comedians increasingly side with the Establishment? How can comics say that they are ‘punching up’ when they support the people being ‘cancelled’ by corporations? As society becomes more authoritarian, where is the satirical response and creative backlash?
SPEAKERS
Miriam Elia
satirical conceptual artist; author, We See the Sights, We Go To The Gallery and We Do Lockdown; creator, A Series Of Psychotic Episodes
Dominic Frisby
writer; comedian; author, Bitcoin: the future of money?
Graham Linehan
creator and co-creator, Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd; comedy writer, Count Arthur Strong, Brass Eye and The Fast Show; author, Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy
Chair: Andy Shaw
co-founder, Comedy Unleashed
#BattleFest2019: Resisting wokeness with Andrew Doyle and Douglas Murray
#BattleFest2019: Health and genomics - what’s the score with polygenic scores?
#BattleFest2019: How can we create a new industrial revolution?
#BattleFest2019: Do we need a Green New Deal?
#BattleFest2019: From zero hours to apprenticeships - young people at work
#BattleFest2019: What’s the point of going to university?
#BattleFest2019: How can we create a construction revolution?
#BattleFest2019: Artificial intelligence in schools - where’s the humanity?
#BattleFest2019: Does the world need a government?
#BattleFest2019: A waste of a good crisis? A decade after the crash, with Larry Elliott
#BattleFest2019: What is the future of the Union?
#BattleFest2019: Caster Semenya running into controversy - genes, gender and sport
#PodcastOfIdeas: first thoughts on General Election 2019
#BattleFest2019: Assisted dying - a doctor’s poisoned chalice?
#BattleFest2019: The rise of toxic politics - can we be civil?
#BattleFest2019: Woke corporations - responsible capitalism or virtue signalling?
#BattleFest2019: What does it mean to be normal?
#BattleFest2019: Extinction or progress? Visions of the future
#BattleFest2019: The Life of Brian at 40 - are we more easily offended today?
#BattleFest2019: Titania McGrath - satire in the age of social justice
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free