Media Watch

14/3/01

They may be funny, but anti-Welsh gags are no joke

'We've been the subject of English disdain for so long that even devolution seems a fraudulent device'

Red-hot Welsh patriot that I am, I was mildly amused by Anne Robinson's suggestion that Wales and all its inhabitants should be consigned to the Orwellian outer darkness of Paul Merton's Room 101. A joke is a joke, and that one was agreeably politically incorrect while conforming to Ms Robinson's carefully nurtured persona as a curmudgeonly old bag. The wilder Welsh responses, with their preposterous talk of appeals to the Race Relations Board, complaints to the police and summonses to select committees, strike me as overwrought. ...

For all you foreigners (oops) out there, Anne Robinson is a kind of 50 year-old, thinnish, spiky virago - with spectacles. She's curt, cutting, cold, and routinely condescending, and this whole persona is something of a trademark for her.

She makes men quiver and women sulk.

She acts a bit, one imagines, like the head of an old Victorian school for 'gals' - a Margaret Thatcher with a vicious ruler swishing determinedly at flailing legs for the sheer delight of it all.

Well, she made a derogatory comment/joke about the Welsh in a BBC comedy programme called Room 101 a few days ago, and, of course, here in the UK, we cannot make jokes about the Scots or the Irish, but we have been able, just about, to get away with jokes about the Welsh!

Tentatively.

But it now seems that many of the Welsh want to defend themselves furiously with the political-correctness ploy of alleging racism in the direction of anyone making derogatory jokes about them.

So, no doubt, only derogatory jokes about the English are going to be permissible henceforth.

However, it must be terrible for Welsh men. Not only do they have to suffer persistent denigration and humiliation because of their gender and their manhood, they also have to endure jokes about their nationality and their roots!

What else is there?

No wonder the Welsh Assembly is in such a mess and all its male politicians always look so beaten and haggard.

But, joy oh joy, the purpose of this piece is to show you that The Independent actually deigned to print the following letter. (It was a response to the above article.)

Sir: Jan Morris is quite right to question the double standard that it is acceptable to be rude about Welsh people, as Anne Robinson was on the BBC's Room 101, but not about other groups such as the Irish and mothers-in-law ("They may be funny, but anti-Welsh gags are no joke", 8 March). However, there is one minority which seems to be exempt from protection against injury to feelings. No matter how many times people use the test of whether something would be acceptable if "Jew", "black" or "gay" were substituted, this group is still discriminated against. I'm talking, of course, about men.

Yes, the Welsh came in for a pasting, courtesy of Ms Robinson, in one section of the programme. But she was continually sniping against men throughout the whole show, and the silence emanating from the usual liberal corrective sections of the media has been deafening.

From RB, London E7

Do you see? We have The Independent actually allowing a man to speak up for men by publishing his letter!

What progress!

PS Did you know that when a typical Scot crosses the border into England, the average IQ of both countries goes down!

END

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