Worst Take of the Week: White Men Can't Make Comedy Vs. Let's Just Forget About Colonialism

Welcome to Angus Take House – a weekly column in which I will be pitting two of the wildest takes the world's great thinkers have rustled up against each other. This is your one-stop shop for the meatiest verdicts and saltiest angles on the world's happenings. Go and grab a napkin – these juicy hot takes are fresh from the griddle.

TAKE #1:

What’s the story? The BBC’s controller of comedy commissioning emphasised, in a recent interview, his commitment to “voices we haven’t yet heard.” In response to a question about Monty Python, he then replied “If you’re going to assemble a team now, it’s not going to be six Oxbridge white blokes.”

Reasonable Take: I am all for anything that removes the concept of being funny from the sweaty clutches of Oxbridge improv groups.

BLT: Can’t we just admit that the worst thing you can be these days is a white, middle-class, male sketch comedian!

Fans of Classic British Comedy Monty Python will be pleased to know that the irrepressible imaginations of Monty Python were back in action this week. Speaking at a press conference promoting his new film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Python member Terry Gilliam (the American one) responded to the suggestion that British comedy needs less “Oxbridge white blokes”, by saying he now tells the world he’s a black lesbian… called Loretta!

He said: “It made me cry: the idea that … no longer six white Oxbridge men can make a comedy show. Now we need one of this, one of that, everybody represented… this is bullshit. I no longer want to be a white male, I don’t want to be blamed for everything wrong in the world: I tell the world now I’m a black lesbian… My name is Loretta and I’m a BLT, a black lesbian in transition.”

John Cleese agreed with Gilliam’s sentiments on Twitter, responding: “BBC's Head of Comedy puts Monty Python's lack of originality down to a surfeit of education and racist bias.” Which is, yes, definitely what he was saying. This whole thing is all about Monty Python.

Thing is, right, if being a BLT – a “black lesbian in transition” to quote Gilliam’s full “joke” – is really the best way to get ahead in modern comedy, then that begs the question: where are they all? Honestly, off the top of my head I can think of less than five comedians in the world who fit that description. Maybe six I suppose, now that we have to count Gilliam. And that's not because they don't exist, it's because they're not on TV.

Sadly, this is just the same knee-jerk reaction we should be used to by now – the “hedgehog rolling up into a ball” of retirement-age white blokes. Terry, mate, “less white men” doesn’t mean “no more white men ever again.” It just means: “more of some other people.” It’s still fine to be a white bloke. Better still, it’s as piss easy as it ever was. You can even try and fail to make the same film for 29 years on the trot and people will still take you seriously!

The most depressing thing is, Gilliam isn’t the only one this week to joke about pretending to be a woman in order to teach some SJWs a lesson. The Spectator’s Rod Liddle is apparently planning on attending Woman Fest, the UK’s first all-female festival, this August – where he’ll be “self-identifying”. Honestly, if these guys weren’t so bloody hilarious you might say they were grasping desperately for relevance in a world that has evolved beyond their intellect!

TAKE #2:

What’s the story? Emmanuel Macron has just concluded a two-day visited to Nigeria, during which he had some thoughts on how Africa and Europe should repair the damage done by colonialism.

Reasonable Take: There’s not really a quick fix for this, is there?

Croque Monsieur President: Shall we just… draw a line under it?

During his recent trip to Nigeria, Emmanuel Macron surprised everyone when he announced that one evening on his official tour would be spent at Shrine, an iconic nightclub founded by Fela Kuti. The whole trip was geared around promoting a series of “cultural events” dedicated to Africa in 2020, so he may well have seen this as an opportunity to demonstrate just what Europe and Africa building cultural bridges might look like…

Ah, that. It looks like that.

Macron is, to be fair, having a rotten time of it at the moment. A couple of weeks ago he snapped at a teenager for not addressing him by his full Presidential title, and recent polling suggests he is less popular in France than Trump is in America. Which doesn’t make any sense, when he’s sharing ideas as groundbreaking as the one above. Because I think, and correct me if I’m wrong, that the big man is suggesting we might finally be free of the scars of Empire because… people are too young to remember sunburned men in pith hats colonising them.

Macron’s diplomacy massively has the vibe of a young teacher who assumes, because he’s young, he can therefore relate to his students. Except he’s not relatable, he’s tapped. He’s single, he cycles a fold-up bike to school every day, and he really enjoys shouting at people. One day when he connects his laptop to the projector to display a Powerpoint, you catch a glimpse of his desktop and it’s a photo of him hiking on his own in Wiltshire. He doesn’t seem to be friendly with the other staff, except the head who he gets on with very well. Yet despite all of this, he regularly starts bollockings with “look… guys… I get it… it’s Friday… you want to chill out.” This is Macron, trying to heal geopolitical wounds by appearing down with the kids. Honestly re-read that tweet. He’s about a breath away from saying “don’t have a cow man” and trying to fist-bump someone.

Sadly the implied suggestion that young Africans who speak French or English, have families who have lived through the political unrest of the last century, or live in one of the many former French colonies that still use the CFA franc as their currency, have no tangible connection to colonialism is laughable. And the further suggestion that Europe should respond to this by “rebuilding a new future through culture” is almost worse. Emmanuel Macron: rewriting Africa’s narrative, one awkward hand-clap at a time!

PRIME CUT: Technically Macron’s take is probably worse, but Gilliam renaming himself Loretta is a joke so rancid it can’t go unpunished!

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