I see that David Jason has been forced to apologise for repeating an age-old joke:
"What do you call a Pakistani cloakroom attendant?"
The Telegraph prints the punchline as: ""Ma-hat-ma coat."
It's very old. In fact I first heard a similar joke on the Two Ronniies years ago.
"Mr Mohammed Shafiq, of the Ramadhan Foundation, accused Sir David of being out of touch with reality in portraying Pakistanis as cloakroom attendants.
"Many top jobs in this country are held by British Muslims, from lawyers, to doctors, politicians and businessmen.."
Er hallo, Mr Shafiq? This was a pun. That is a play on words. It has nothing to do with stereotyping Pakistanis as cloakroom attendants. It is making a play on words about the name Mahatma (remember Ghandi?). The pun would not work if the person was a lawyer, doctor, politician or businessman, you tw*t!
Are these puns racist: "Have you heard about the Scottish dentist 'Phil McCavity', or the Irish rice worker called 'Paddy Fields'. No, they are not. It's just making fun with words.
Isn't Mr Shafiq himself inciting racial hatred by suggesting that we cannot continue our long tradition of making puns out of peoples names and, by implication, that Pakistanis have no sense opf humour?
Link here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/5049771/Sir-David-Jason-apologises-for-Pakistani-joke-in-radio-broadcast.html
Rant over.
while i agree with you that the pc brigade has gone too far, i actually find that joke amusing, there are "racist" jokes about all races and to my mind to pick out david jason and that joke a racist comment or what ever is and actual racist thing to do against david jason.
eg, you go to any inner city estate and there will be an asian or blacks community center, which is fine by me and i have no problems with that, but if i opened a whites community centre i would be lynched. before i get slagged off i have friends of all races and we all take the pee out of each other.
i used to go on a forum hosted by sony for bruce springsteen related topics, a similar joke was placed on there, no this forum was used by people all over the world and i was the 90,000 and something member so there were a lot of people on ther, the next day the forum was pulled and never relaunched. the joke was funny.
i thing it will get to a point where kids will be taught wat is funny or not, what they can laugh at or not, its a sad state of affairs.
[size=16]please miss, may i laugh!!!!!
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