Russell Brand: rape and sexual abuse allegations, grifting and general dodginess - discussion

[RD2003]

Tbh in some ways it was worse. Everyone knew what Bernard Manning was about, he wasn't doing any knowing winks he just said the shit he thought. The real poison of shows like Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Mock The Week etc at their worst (and not just them - basically every "edgy" Channel Four programme from Big Breakfast on up), was the way they inveigled everyone involved to be competitively nasty. You could see comics who were usually pretty decent getting caught up in the one-upmanship. And the press absolutely ate it up, the Bear Pit. All justified to the rest of us on the grounds it was breaking free from the fusty old conservativism of the past. Which it usually wasn't, really, it was just repackaging for a faster, more aggressive age.

As far as I'm aware, Bernard Manning never made rape jokes, ironically or otherwise.

You could even argue that he was more ironic, in his own way, than the later generations of comedians.

 

[ska invita]

sorry not having this bernard manning wasnt as bad as all that
its a whole other level of nastiness, and tapped into very real street level racist violence to boot

 

[Elpenor]

I thought the usual Manning defence was a gifted comedian technically (timing?) with despicable material.

 

[Larry O'Hara]

You're really going to go with 'poor victimised Julian Assange' on this thread?

I do not like or condone his treatment of women: however he was targeted by the US for exposing their war crimes, aided and abetted by the Guardian (and that bastard Starmer at the CPS), who lied claiming that it wasnt all a ruse to get him extradited to the US, when it was.

I cannot allow on any thread Guardian scum to claim moral high ground on anything whatsoever without drawing attention to this episode.

If you dont like it, tough

 

[8ball]

Tbh in some ways it was worse. Everyone knew what Bernard Manning was about, he wasn't doing any knowing winks he just said the shit he thought. The real poison of shows like Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Mock The Week etc at their worst (and not just them - basically every "edgy" Channel Four programme from Big Breakfast on up), was the way they inveigled everyone involved to be competitively nasty. You could see comics who were usually pretty decent getting caught up in the one-upmanship. And the press absolutely ate it up, the Bear Pit. All justified to the rest of us on the grounds it was breaking free from the fusty old conservativism of the past. Which it usually wasn't, really, it was just repackaging for a faster, more aggressive age.

I don’t remember this Gladatorial era, but then as I’ve said already, I think I was watching completely different channels/programmes.

 

[8ball]

I do not like or condone his treatment of women: however he was targeted by the US for exposing their war crimes, aided and abetted by the Guardian (and that bastard Starmer at the CPS), who lied claiming that it wasnt all a ruse to get him extradited to the US, when it was.

I cannot allow on any thread Guardian scum to claim moral high ground on anything whatsoever without drawing attention to this episode.

If you dont like it, tough

Are you saying that the Times and Channel 4 are in the pay of the US Government when it comes to this?

 

[RD2003]

sorry not having this, see how many seconds you get through this before you start saying maybe bernard manning wasnt as bad as all that

its a whole other level of nastiness, and tapped into very real street level racist violence to boot

I never said he was good, bad or indifferent.

I haven't the time to watch a 40 minute video (which I think I might have seen before anyway)*, but I'm not sure he would have made rape jokes in it, ironically or otherwise. And, again as far as I'm aware, he never behaved like Brand has been accused of doing.

'Bernard Manning' was a character played by Bernard Manning. He just played to his audience, which wasn't easily offended, using the very same language, and telling the same sort of jokes jokes, they did, and it's a bit patronising to think that they went away spouting 'the world as seen by Bernard.' They had life as they actually experienced it, in all its contradictions, to contend with. I grew up in roughly the same area he came from and where his club was, and always found the leftie/liberal vitriol faintly amusing: I could see the validity of the criticisms, but couldn't help thinking that if these are the very people you seek to win over, I don't expect you to have much success. Even Darcus Howe ended up saying something similar, after spending time with him, in that series of documentaries he made 20-odd years ago. There's also the factor that a lot of people don't like being told what to think to contend with, and given the fact that he was actually a skilled comedian, many people will have inevitably laughed, including many of the liberals and lefties (even if secretly.)

'Bernard, are you a racist?' said 'Mrs Merton' that time. 'Yes,' said Bernard. What the fuck else was he going to say given the context and how he'd made his name? In his personal life he may or may not have been. Who knows for sure?


*Left the video running while sporadically typing this. It would take a faint heart to be all that traumatised by anything in it, especially if you remember the times and given the fact that many of the jokes are not even based on prejudice.

 

[Epona]

*Left the video running while sporadically typing this. It would take a faint heart to be all that traumatised by anything in it, especially if you remember the times and given the fact that many of the jokes are not even based on prejudice.

Did you miss the "P*ki" joke in the first fucking seconds of the video or something?

Also "remember the times" is not a fucking excuse for that sort of bigotry.

 

[krtek a houby]

Bernard Manning and Assange apologists.

Fucking hell.

 

[8ball]

Also "remember the times" is not a fucking excuse for that sort of bigotry.

Sometimes I wonder how many of our most right-on members will be trying that one on in 25 years.

 

[tim]

I do not like or condone his treatment of women: however he was targeted by the US for exposing their war crimes, aided and abetted by the Guardian (and that bastard Starmer at the CPS), who lied claiming that it wasnt all a ruse to get him extradited to the US, when it was.

I cannot allow on any thread Guardian scum to claim moral high ground on anything whatsoever without drawing attention to this episode.

If you dont like it, tough

Do you think he should have been willing go to defend himself against those rape allegations a Swedish court?

 

[Epona]

Sometimes I wonder how many of our most right-on members will be trying that one on in 25 years.

Perfectly prepared to accept that sometimes people get it wrong occasionally and that can be largely down to a cultural milieu if they are not exposed to more diverse opinions and influences, but I'd expect people to be humbly apologetic in the future if that was the case - it would be more interesting to see who was spouting a "sorry, BUT..." type of line.

 

[RD2003]

Did you miss the "P*ki" joke in the first fucking seconds of the video or something?

Also "remember the times" is not a fucking excuse for that sort of bigotry.

I didn't miss anything, and like many of us, and as I made clear in my post, I do remember how things were at the time. But my post, whether effectively or not, was a brief attempt to put it into context. I wasn't expressing my worldview.

 

[Rob Ray]

I don’t remember this Gladatorial era, but then as I’ve said already, I think I was watching completely different channels/programmes.

Mock the Week is cold-blooded comedy combat | TV blog

Jimi Famurewa: Seeing Mock the Week up close reveals just how competitive it is. But is this the future of the panel show?

www.theguardian.com

From 2009. There were a lot of admiring writeups about its legendary "gosh isn't it brutal" moments (I'm not saying this as though I didn't watch it, but it was full of stuff which was out for shock value, from Boyle especially).

 

[8ball]

Perfectly prepared to accept that sometimes people get it wrong and that can be largely down to a cultural milieu if they are not exposed to more diverse opinions and influences, but I'd expect people to be humbly apologetic in the future if that was the case - it would be more interesting to see who was spouting a "sorry, BUT..." type of line.

Oh yeah, I don’t buy the “remember the times” thing when there is a clear crime that is illegal in both times.

My point was more about the local “end of history” delusion than anything related to Brand.

 

[Humberto]

Bernard Manning could tell a joke and had timing. Therefore he was 'funny' whatever that was worth on some level. Ok. He also used that skill to other, ridicule and went further than that. TBH there was a generation, his generation, of those privated by the war and forced to do national service who were scumbags, anti- immigrant and used such phrases as P**i-bashing, and used that insult without hesitation.

 

[Wilf]

Tbh in some ways it was worse. Everyone knew what Bernard Manning was about, he wasn't doing any knowing winks he just said the shit he thought. The real poison of shows like Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Mock The Week etc at their worst (and not just them - basically every "edgy" Channel Four programme from Big Breakfast on up), was the way they inveigled everyone involved to be competitively nasty. You could see comics who were usually pretty decent getting caught up in the one-upmanship. And the press absolutely ate it up, the Bear Pit. All justified to the rest of us on the grounds it was breaking free from the fusty old conservativism of the past. Which it usually wasn't, really, it was just repackaging for a faster, more aggressive age.

The last thing I'd do would be to defend old school racist and sexist 60s or 70s comedy. However another thing that I find worse about Ross, Brand and probably a few others was that they were willing to be physically or directly vile to women in the studio. Maybe it was just that old school TV comedy, whilst horrible in so many ways, was governed by more assertive management and sense of societal outrage. But Ross has no qualms about saying horrible things to and about specific women he is interviewing. Can't remember who it was, but he also told a female actor that he would 'fuck her' and more. Brand went so much further, pawing at women, pretty much crawling over them in the studio. 'Edgy', 'knowing' and all the rest, also the product of multichannel TV, a race to be the most outrageous/to the bottom, all backed up by TV executives and production companies. But actually, just plain old sexual assault and harassment.

 

[krtek a houby]

Mock the Week is cold-blooded comedy combat | TV blog

Jimi Famurewa: Seeing Mock the Week up close reveals just how competitive it is. But is this the future of the panel show?

www.theguardian.com

From 2009. There were a lot of admiring writeups about its legendary "gosh isn't it brutal" moments (I'm not saying this as though I didn't watch it, but it was full of stuff which was out for shock value, from Boyle especially).

Some back then still clinging to the nonsensical theory that women couldn't be comedians

 

[Rob Ray]

also the product of multichannel TV, a race to be the most outrageous/to the bottom

Very much so. The convenient lack of memory about Brand's behaviour isn't isolated, he and his ilk were just the front of house. The producers and showrunners were if anything more to blame for creating the atmosphere - it wasn't Brand who kept pushing the envelope on the whole rest of the shock telly ecosystem, from Jeremy Kyle to reality TV. Just one more boundary, for the ratings ...

 

[8ball]

Some back then still clinging to the nonsensical theory that women couldn't be comedians

Weren’t there women comedians way before 2009?

 

[Epona]

Also tbf Manning was a proud racist - he not only admitted his racism, he wanted to promote it. He was not a "product of his time", he actively promoted racism and helped to make it a product of later times.

I don't care how good his timing was, what is more shocking to me is that TV shows and events would book him as entertainment.

I grew up in the '70s in a rural village in Surrey (by which I mean absolutely no diversity) and I knew as a child that that sort of racist language and jokes were wrong. I was taught that by my parents who grew up in the '50s and '60s, so it's not enough to say it was just the times.

 

[krtek a houby]

Weren’t there women comedians way before 2009?

There's been women comedians for decades. Odd question.

 

[Rob Ray]

And all this reached way down too - I remember a colleague of mine did a comedy course in I guess 2010 or a bit later, and was put off by an attitude even at the absolute beginner end of the circuit that rape jokes were some taboo-breaking badge of honour. Anecdotal obv but it was there.

 

[8ball]

There's been women comedians for decades. Odd question.

Well, I was responding to an odd sentence tbf.

 

[tim]

Bernard Manning could tell a joke and had timing. Therefore he was 'funny' whatever that was worth on some level. Ok. He also used that skill to other, ridicule and went further than that. TBH there was a generation, his generation, of those privated by the war and forced to do national service who were scumbags, anti- immigrant and used such phrases as P**i-bashing, and used that insult without hesitation.

Bollocks! Do you/did you know people from that 'generation"? Like Manning you are looking for a group to vilify.

 

[RD2003]

Bernard Manning could tell a joke and had timing. Therefore he was 'funny' whatever that was worth on some level. Ok. He also used that skill to other, ridicule and went further than that. TBH there was a generation, his generation, of those privated by the war and forced to do national service who were scumbags, anti- immigrant and used such phrases as P**i-bashing, and used that insult without hesitation.

I knew people, especially when working in factories in my teens and 20s, who went to see him regularly (both male and female, and, occasionally, non-white). They did and didn't share the views he expressed, if you see what I mean. As I said, I could see the validity of the criticisms levelled at the likes of Manning, but they weren't the types to take kindly to being told what they should or shouldn't think. And, if it came to it, these were the same people you would have been on a picket line with.

 

[Epona]

I knew people, especially when working in factories in my teens and 20s, who went to see him regularly (both male and female, and, occasionally, non-white). They did and didn't share the views he expressed, if you see what I mean. As I said, I could see the validity of the criticisms levelled at the likes of Manning, but they weren't the types to take kindly to being told what they should or shouldn't think. And, if it came to it, these were the same people you would have been on a picket line with.

Manning, his promoters, his agents, the people who booked him, were "telling people what to think" by booking him and letting him be part of mainstream entertainment.

Normalising that language. Normalising that viewpoint.

 

[Wilf]

As far as I'm aware, Bernard Manning never made rape jokes, ironically or otherwise.

You could even argue that he was more ironic, in his own way, than the later generations of comedians.

Bernard Manning eh? We've had Sheik Mansoor and Vladimir Putin, I wondered who was going to complete your holy trinity of misunderstood scamps.

 

[Saunders]

All these programs aired or re-shown on Dave channel tv. Coz ‘Dave’ he’s a good bloke, likes a laugh, a bit of banter

 

[krtek a houby]

Well, I was responding to an odd sentence tbf.

About how women were repeatedly denigrated in the industry, whether being dismissed as unfunny or abused by predators?

2009 came up in the discussion, a discussion about the way in which women have been treated by the industry.