Satire and the Saltire
To rebalance matters against the "fun police", some subversive humour in Scotland wouldn't go amiss
“AND we’re going to have some fun!” bellowed Piers Morgan into the TV lens during the seven minute long rant against ‘woke snowflakes’ which marked the beginning of his new show on Talk TV, the current affairs network launched across the UK on Monday. Ever the self-publicist, Mr Morgan is now casting himself afresh as a free speech martyr, a self-styled successor to Sir Winston Churchill and George Washington. But while he may well be a rabid egotist, even rabid egomaniacs can have a point sometimes.
Our culture could do with a little more irreverent fun. It could do with unbuttoning itself just a notch. Shane Warne, the late Australian cricketer quoted approvingly by Mr Morgan on his opening night show, declared recently that we should “sometimes just say ‘get stuffed’ to the fun police.” I wonder if this isn’t more ingrained. Isn’t the reality that we self-police instead? Unsure of our moorings, scared of giving offence unintentionally, fearful that we may be cancelled if we do or say the wrong thing, we decide to button up and keep our counsel. It’s not altogether healthy.
The instinct towards caution comes from a good place, of course. And for all that political correctness may feel stifling we shouldn’t lose sight of the advances in society over the last few decades. Unequivocally, this country is now a better, more open, place to live. But something has been lost along the way. The public square, now examined by the unsparing eye of social media, is wary and watchful. Transgressive humour has, in my case, has gone underground, mostly now found in a few WhatsApp groups I share with fellow travellers who feel safe in each other’s company and enjoy our shared illicit jokes. “Whatever is funny is subversive”, said George Orwell. Today, genuine subversive humour against the mores of our post-religious hyper-liberal culture is thin on the ground. Lacking that, it makes us all a little less human, a little less interesting, a little more joyless.
Compared to days gone by, we look staid and conservative. Think back to the 60s when political satire emerged from the same university corridors which now seek to crack down on free speech. There was the late Joe Orton, the gay Leicester-born playwright, forced to keep his sexuality private, who in 1969 gained posthumous revenge on British society with his play “What the Butler Saw”, a merciless satire of our end-of-the-pier sexual mores. Its opening night prompted cries of “filth!” from audience members who had come to watch Shakespearean legend Sir Ralph Richardson perform and got rather more than they expected. Or wind forward a decade and think of Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” which sent up the silliness of organised religion, and saw John Cleese attacked by outraged clergymen, and protests outside cinemas. Satire bit hard and drew blood.
Today, organised religion is on the wane; instead we have organised satire. It punches down against the same old targets: the church, the right, America. When an Old Etonian sits in Number Ten, you might well argue that these old targets still deserve a kicking – and you’d be right. But how dreary and derivative these jokes have become. Witness Netflix’s current blockbuster, “Anatomy of a Scandal”, where no caricature of a rogue-ish Tory cabinet minister is left un-mined.
It’s all so unimaginative. We have jesters aplenty to (rightly) take down the foibles and privileges of the old established order. But where are the satirists taking on the absurdities of our new establishment masters? Genuine satire should seek out power and authority wherever it is found and take no prisoners. Sometimes it seems jesters are no longer quite so welcome.
Which brings to me to Scotland. Nationalism is famously humourless. As Orwell also observed seventy years ago, nationalists “will show great sensitiveness about such thing as the correct display of flags, relative size of headlines and the order in which different countries are named.” It doesn’t sound much fun. In a society where many Scots’ identities are closely tied to their political allegiances, and particularly to the SNP, our culture sometimes seems too fragile, too angry and too po-faced to withstand the weight of satire and laughter. It is only one anecdote but last month the political comic Matt Forde performed his stand-up act in Edinburgh. Half-way through his set, he recounted how a “bloke got up during the SNP bit and said: “I’m Scottish and you’re and arsehole”, before walking out. He even left his pint.
Fear of this type of reaction appears to have an effect. One friend who used to write for the BBC now complains that commissioners are too scared to go near anything too controversial. Anything too harsh or pointed leads to the inevitable claims about bias. Can anyone imagine a Scottish political version of Have I Got News for You? Put it in the box marked “too risky”.
It’s a shame, because the targets are everywhere. From the pompous self-regard of the Scottish Greens, to the born-again evangelism of today’s young Nats, to the grievance monsters who patrol our online spaces, and to the perma-rage of George Galloway’s wacky races unionism, what fertile territory we have for hard-edged and brutal satire of our modern political culture. Scotland’s self-image has been flattered and pampered by our political elites over the last few years. It would be a better, more interesting, place if a few dark mirrors shone a more cutting light on matters.
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THE scandal of Scotland’s drug death crisis has been well documented: last year the number of drug related deaths hit 1339, a record. Last week, I spoke to a former user called Steven Brown. Hailing from Blackpool, which like Glasgow, has some of the worst rates of drug abuse in the country, he now works with people with addictions in his home town to support them on the road to recovery. He’s paid through a Home Office plan called Project ADDER which seeks both to crack down hard on organised crime groups while also getting users onto a more stable footing.
Steven came to Glasgow to share his experiences and he gave me a brilliant insight. I asked him what works when it comes to helping users off a life on drugs. “Well,” he replied, “I can tell you what worked for me…” Right there, I thought, there’s the point. Drug users like Steven have individual stories, often pockmarked by abuse and poverty. If our social services don’t understand the unique stories each drug users has and instead just treats them as a number, then they’re not going to find the spark that will convince them to come clean.
Former users like Steven are best placed to make this connection. If we’re going to end the national shame of drug deaths, we could do a lot worse than using people like him to support the people he used to be. It is about offering hope and kindness – and that is best done by people who know.
ENDS
This article first appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail 27th April 2022