of the holocaust. could you tell thatjoke in the same way, and for it to work in the same context and with the same tone, if you weren t jewish? i personally think i would have no problem in hearing that joke from a non jew. i think it has more emotional resonance from ajew, and i myself, you may know this about me, my mum is a holocaust, well, not exactly a survivor. she was a refugee from nazism. my grandfather was actually in dachau. so, i think it has more resonance for me, and i tell it with more passion, but thejoke has no meanness of spirit, no evil, no approval of the holocaust in it, so therefore anyone can tell it. who decides in your long experience of comedy, cos you ve been doing it for three decades or more, who are the arbiters who decide when a line is crossed? is itjust a sort of collective crowd wisdom? or, you know. how do we then.? i think that changes, doesn t it? and at the moment, there is an issue with the fact that, because we have social media, and social medi
one that is profound and says something about how, perhaps, you know, humanity had never reached a greater point of darkness. and you can do that through a joke. so, you have to deconstruct the individualjoke and say, what s the target? what s going on? what s the semiotics, basically? could you bear to? i ll tell that joke, if you like. a very shortjoke. 0k. i ll tell this joke. ..which people will then decide whether they find it funny or offensive. go on, do it. i doubt they ll find it offensive. some people might not find it funny. i think thejoke is, in a way, more profound than it is funny. but it was told to me, this joke, by a jewish literary academic called devorah baum. i d never heard the joke before. it concerns a holocaust survivor who after the war dies and goes to heaven. and when he gets to heaven, god asks the survivor to tell him a holocaustjoke. so, the survivor does, and god says, that s not funny. and the survivor says, well, i guess you had to be there. what
via the example of the holocaust. could you tell thatjoke in the same way, and for it to work in the same context and with the same tone, if you weren t jewish? i personally think i would have no problem in hearing thatjoke from a non jew. i think it has more emotional resonance from ajew, and i myself, you may not know this about me, my mum is a holocaust, well, not exactly a survivor. she was a refugee from nazism. my grandfather was actually in dachau. so, i think it has more resonance for me, and i tell it with more passion, but thejoke has no meanness of spirit, no evil, no approval of the holocaust in it, so, therefore, anyone can tell it. who decides, in your long experience of comedy, because you ve been doing it for three decades or more, who are the arbiters who decide when a line is crossed? is itjust a sort of collective crowd wisdom? or, you know, how do we then.? i think that changes, doesn t it? and at the moment, there is an issue with the fact that, because we have soc
but this show isn tjust about the bad parts. social media is very complicated in terms of what it s doing to us, and there s undeniably an incredible thing going on. it s an incredible form of mass technology, of mass communication. and i find that sometimes when i think it s at its worst, i ll do a joke, possibly trying to take down a troll, and then suddenly people will build on thatjoke. i have this process, which you ll know about in the show. i talk about people saying yes to comedy , about accepting and building a sort of improvisational technique. and if i do that with a joke, then suddenly there s all these people who are not trolls and not abusers who will be going with thejoke and being funny, and it can make me feel. you have this wonderful phrase. i think you call it becoming the conductor of an orchestra of comedy . yeah, well, that s what it can feel like. slightly grandiose, but it does feel like that, because there s so many people. and they re often the people you do
very interesting things. i mean, at one point, i think during the height of your fame, as you say, tens of millions of people were tuning in to watch your satirical shows in 2012, 2013, you said the joke is mightier than the sword. did you ever really believe that? at a certain point, i believe that, and i think till today, maybe thejoke is not mightier than the sword, but the sword is.but thejoke can make the sword very nervous. but as far as might, i think we need to be realistic about the hyperbole of romanticising political satire and comedy against much stronger currents and stronger players, especially if those players are supported by many members of the international community who preach democracy day and night. but at the end of the day, they end up