Ho Ho Fucking Ho—It Wouldn’t Be Christmas without It.

Yes, it’s that time again and, as I so often do, I would like to share with you one of my favourite Christmas songs … join in if you know it …

Read the free sample of The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts here.

Buy your copy of The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts now!

© 2012 Gary William Murning

You Can Laugh at Disability.

I haven’t blogged for quite a while, I know. Life has been rather hectic of late — in a good, my-book’s-getting-published way, thankfully (more about that soon). So I thought I’d return, however briefly, with a bit of a bang.

It would seem that, once again, people are intent on telling us what we can and can’t laugh at. Physicist Stephen Hawking — a gentleman I happen to admire and respect a great deal — has been featured in a cartoon which shows two people discussing him and referring to the fact that he’s recently been seriously ill. The caption reads: “I wonder if they’ve tried switching him off and switching him on again”.

Now, I know. Bad taste, right? I mean, the guy was ill and, you know, disabled. We can’t laugh about things like that, can we? Well, if The Motor Neurone Disease Association is to be believed, no. It’s taboo. It’s forbidden — it is, they say, distasteful and mocks disability.

Speaking as someone with a severe physical disability, though, what do I say?

Firstly, Stephen Hawking does not need a charity to speak for him. He has a voice synthesiser, and the last I heard it was working just fine. I understand that the charity was, to a degree, speaking for those who cannot represent themselves. But even so, this in itself does not mean that they are right. (Just in case there’s any doubt, I think they are wrong.)

Secondly, it was funny. I laughed. As someone who is, in my own way, rather dependent on technology, it struck a chord with me. This cartoon was actually rather clever. It doesn’t just speak about Hawking and disability. It speaks about how reliant we’ve become on technology and, to my mind, the whole question of where man ends and machine begins.

Thirdly, humour at the expense of someone with a disability does not necessarily mean that they are being cruelly mocked. Yes, humour can, at times, be used as a weapon — but in my own experience jokes about my disability, jokes aimed directly at me by people I know, often have more to do with inclusion than anything else. We rib people in a friendly way to make them feel, at times, special. The friendly leg pull that says “you are one of us”.

Fourthly, is it just me, or are these associations/charities becoming just a little bit distasteful themselves in the opportunistic way they pounce on these stories — in an attempt, the cynic in me insists (or is it the realist in me?), in an attempt to promote themselves? After all, this particular cartoon featured in a regional newspaper and probably wouldn’t have come to the attention of more than a handful of people had The Motor Neurone Disease Association not insisted on speaking out about it and labelling it offensive.

Ultimately, I have to say I find the very idea of being told what I can and cannot laugh at execrable. To say, as has been said, that such a cartoon reduces Hawking to a condition and the technology he uses is, frankly, far more insulting to the esteemed professor than any cartoon could ever be. By all means, defend those who need to be defended — but I very much doubt that Hawking wants or needs this kind of representation. He probably found it amusing, too.

But maybe that’s too much of a leap for me to take so, instead, I’ll simply say this: if any charity out there ever feels the need to come to my defence without my explicitly requesting it, don’t. It’s presumptuous and offensive… one might even say prejudiced.

© 2009 Gary William Murning

Four Yorkshiremen.

A masterpiece of one-upmanship (or should that be one-downmanship?)

Jacqui Smith Waterboarded.

My favourite Peter Brookes cartoon of the week, shamelessly “borrowed” from Times Online…

The Last but One Supper.

One of my many, many personal Monty Python favourites — the Pope and Michaelangelo:

All text © 2009 Gary William Murning

What Shan’t We Do with the Drunken Sailor?

After reading that the Bookstart charity — a project that encourages parents to read with their children, presumably so that parents can improve their literacy skills — has rewritten the familiar and much-loved sea shanty What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor?, so that said sailor is no longer drunken but, instead, “grumpy”, I find myself a little concerned.

Now, claims have been made that this was not done in the name of “political correctness”. And I would never dream of saying that such an esteemed and worthwhile charity would ever lie about such a thing… well, actually, I would — but in this instance I am willing to take their word for it. It isn’t political correctness gone mad.

So what is it?

Well, it was, apparently, “a case of re-cycling a familiar tune for reading events that were based on a pirate theme”. Did you get that? A pirate theme. Not a local vicar theme. Not a missionary theme. Not even a Sound of Music theme. A pirate theme.

(I’m getting perilously close to calling the esteemed and worthwhile charity a bunch of liars, I know, so, I’ll move right along…)

Now, in my day (not that I was around at the time of these aforementioned pirates), pirates were a pretty nasty bunch. When I was a child, I understood that they did all the things that we good people weren’t supposed to. They robbed, murdered, raped, made each other walk the plank and drank lots and lots of rum. That’s what pirates did. Thematically, they were a bad bunch of bastards.

Which begs the question, if they wanted a pirate theme why on earth would they insert action lyrics like “wiggle” and “tickle”? Purely from a personal perspective I have to say I find the prospect of a wiggling and tickling pirate pretty bloody disturbing, but maybe that’s just me.

(Okay, prepare yourself — I’m about to say it…)

Someone’s fibbing, I think! This was a decision based on political correctness! And anyone who says differently? Well, I’ll shave his belly with a rusty razor!

One has to ask oneself what next. I am well aware that this particular sea shanty has already been diluted somewhat in the past — but the very notion of “cleaning up” pirates surely defeats the point. As attractive as Johnny Depp’s pirate efforts might be, the reality was a lot harsher and bloodier. They certainly didn’t tickle each other… well, not in any kind of way you’d want your five-year-old thinking about.

So either treat the subject with a degree of accuracy or leave it alone.

And if you decide that you don’t want to take my generous advice — how about you try rewriting this: ‘Twas on the good ship Venus…

© 2009 Gary William Murning

Wossy Weturns.

It was inevitable, really, wasn’t it? Obama orders Guantánamo to be closed, knife robberies and burglaries are up in the UK, Gaza smugglers get back to work — and the story that everybody seems to be talking about most is Jonathan Ross’s return to television after his three-month ban for making lewd calls with Russell Brand to the actor Andrew Sachs.

And, of course, it’s just as inevitable that I feel I have to say something further on this quite ridiculous state of affairs.

Initially, because of the involvement of Andrew Sachs, I considered this “prank”, or whatever you want to call it, a joke too far. His granddaughter, in my opinion, was fair game, but to involve him in that way… it just left a rather bad taste (as the “dancer” said to the “comedian”). In the intervening months, however, with the BBC continually being pushed to monitor and restrict more rigidly what their presenters say, I find my more usual stance coming to the fore on this matter.

It is time to take a step back, yet again, ladies and gentlemen, and survey this whole episode — and all similar episodes — more rationally, without the knee-jerk response of “that’s offensive!”

What really made me sit up and take notice today was a reference that some guy made on BBC News 24 to an earlier comment Jonathan Ross had made to David Cameron — Ross asking Cameron whether he had fantasised about Margaret Thatcher. This was given as evidence of Jonathan Ross’s recidivistic tendencies. He’s a bad boy now and he’s always been a bad boy. Why? Because he makes jokes about people in positions of power/authority? Because the jokes push the boundaries of good taste? I’m sorry, but this kind of joke is very different to the mistakes he would later make — and the very suggestion that such humour should be somehow eradicated, or even edited, is, frankly, unacceptable and deeply disturbing.

As Kurt Vonnegut said “The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.”

Such humour plays a vitally important role in our society. Its purpose is to challenge, to say the things that we feel we cannot say ourselves. To impose restrictions, to pander to the simpering, politically correct idiots who are scared to offend anyone and everyone, is a further imposition — a further dilution of our right to express an opinion, however unorthodox.

Jonathan Ross made an error of judgement. Speaking for myself, I’d much rather live in a world where such mistakes can occur than one where the censorship of the imagined masses removes all possibility of their ever happening.

© 2009 Gary William Murning