That's racist (or probably not)

Time to wade into a melee, dear reader. What on earth was the Guardian, THE GUARDIAN of all papers, thinking when earlier in the week it printed a very curious piece about comedy that has left right-thinking stand ups fuming and threatening to sue? (To reiterate, that's right-thinking, not right wing.)

Brian Logan's piece, The New Offenders of Stand Up Comedy, stopped short of calling Richard Herring and out-and-out racist, twisting his words to make him out to be a complete and utter miscreant. In the comic's latest show, Logan asserted, "he argues "that racists have a point"".

Oh, come on. This is Richard Herring we're talking about! The journo gave Scott Capurro both barrels, but there's a stark difference between the in-your-face boundaries he pushes and the clever ways Herring plays with an issue to make an interesting point.

It's a shame he won't be bringing the show in question, Hitler Moustache, to Liverpool in the foreseeable future (we tend to get him at the very end of a lengthy year of touring the same show, and as a colleague lamented, maybe he he should have stuck to talking about yoghurt. Or cocks. Like he has in the past). Because this one, I gotta see.

I didn't bother with his last one, Headmaster's Son, because as much as I enjoy his work, as I'd seen quite a few of his last tours and knew the schtick. But this is a different matter, and it's all down to the C-word (context, dear reader, context).

"To have those contentious lines quoted our of context, with absolutely no explanation of what else takes place can have no other effect than to make the casual (and even the quite careful) reader assume that I am a racist," Herring has written on his blog (full story here).

'It is true that I do utter those words, but it is followed by a smart and interesting routine about our attitudes to race and ethnicity and then about 40 minutes of me railing against the BNP and encouraging people to stand up to fascism.

'He makes me sound glib, racist and needlessly controversial."

This, of course, is afforded an extra layer of humour by wondering just how funny it would look to see Herring argue this out in a similar manner if he's still got the Hitler moustache. Then again, Father Ted did that first.

The brilliant Brendon Burns is also apoplectic about how he was perceived in the Guardian piece, and Dave Gorman is standing up for his stand up pals here.

What on earth has actually happened here?! Sadly for us all, it seems the pitiful shadow of Sachsgate continues to loom large.