I mean, standup comedians, chat-show hosts, sketch comics, and the like. Are they making any comments about Kate, speculation about the wedding or the marriage? For instance, I can picture a pretty basic sketch. A comedienne plays Kate Middleton being interviewed (with or without William), while wearing an overcoat primly buttoned to the neck. Odd, you might think, until the interviewer gets to “But how do you REALLY feel?!” Upon which “Kate” tears off the overcoat to reveal something skimpy and sparkly, declares, “Like this, actually!”, leaps onto the nearest tall piece of furniture and starts shaking her thang to “I’ve Got The Power”.
Is anything like that happening? Or are the royals generally off-limits as comedy fodder? (Never wondered about this before; please enlighten me.)
Haven’t really heard anything as yet but be assured, British comedy can be extremely dark and absolutely nothing is off-limits.
The royals are given no respite.
Nothing much, to be honest. It’s just a seemingly nice enough young couple getting married and an extra bank holiday for us proles. It’s not like the Royal family are off limits for comedy or satire, but there doesn’t seem a lot of material with this pair. There’s been a fair bit of sharp comment about ridiculous newspaper coverage, but that’s expected (honestly, many of our newspapers are fucking terrible), and there have been a few comedians quacking endlessly on twitter about how little they care. The usual, really.
It got done over on last week’s Have I Got News For You, but I don’t recall any of the jokes. And it makes the cover of the new Private Eye, but I haven’t read that yet. Looking forward to Sylvie Krin’s take on the story.
In other words, it’s hardly off limits. Just part of the general culture, to be quite honest.
That is funny!
Wonder if Willy has ever given that any thought…although he probably will now.
Great - another reason to consider a full-time therapist for the Royal Family.
On the Now Show on Radio 4 it was along the lines of ‘what has the coalition government done that they would release to the press on the same day as this announcement?’.
I’m going to see some live stand-up this weekend so maybe there’ll be a few more jokes there. But something like this has a very short shelf-life - a lot of people will already be a bit sick of hearing about it so the jokes tend to come in the few satirical comedy shows that happen to be doing a run at that time, such as The Now Show and HIGNFY.
The royals aren’t off-limits for jokes, however Frankie Boyle got in some trouble for something he said about the Queen on Mock The Week. I can’t provide a link because I’m at work and I’m a bit reluctant to enter the search terms in to Google, but if you searched for ‘Frankie Boyle Queen joke’ you’ll probably find what he said. NSFW.
ETA Frankie Boyle didn’t give a rat’s ass about the complaints about his joke.
I don’t even think it was that funny, I mean what was the big fucking deal?
The funny thing was Kirsty Wark on Newsnight asking a controller of the BBC whether the joke was funny and repeating the punchline of the joke to him in a ever so serious manner.
To be honest, there’s not a lot about Prince William to joke about these days.
He’s not as weird-looking as his dad, he doesn’t talk to trees (or offer controversial opinions on topics), he’s a professional search-and-rescue helicopter pilot which has earned him a lot of respect, he doesn’t seem to dress as a nazi or get drunk and abuse passers-by, and he does a lot of charity work (much of it without fanfare).
He’s just another boring non-threatening upper-class chap who one day (in 30-40 yrs) will be king.
Kate Middleton’s also not made tabloid headlines for being a party-girl, or being a bitch, or anything like that… the Waity Katie taunts are a bit harsh, but it’s not like she’s been on a reality TV show complaining about having to wait (for all we know she might be quite chilled out about the whole thing).
Its probably worth mentioning that (IMHO) the majority of Brits are pretty apathetic when it comes to the Royals. There is a definite section of people, mostly elderly women, who really care, particularly when it comes to Diana, and there is another group who are anti-royal, but the vast majority seem to not really care one way or the other. They cost money, but they bring in tourists, so it probably about evens out.
When the wedding was announced, the first response from most people I spoke to was “do we get the day off work?” (which we do, apparently). I doubt many of those people will spend that day actually watching it.
It was during that period where the tabloids were attacking the BBC for absolutely everything. Don’t think any people who actually watches Mock The Week would have found it offensive in the slightest. After all, they presumably watch the programme for this kind of thing.
The Daily Mail managed to persuade enough people to complain though, so it became a ‘controversy’
I don’t understand what’s supposed to be funny about that joke at all. It seems like it’s a reference to something culturally, but I haven’t a clue what. Is it just supposed to be absurd?
Yeah, it’s just a generic “old lady” joke, with the Queen inserted into the setup. It still made me laugh because the punchline took me by surprise, but the Queen bit was irrelevant to the humour.
