How many fascist dictators does it take to change a lightbulb?
'I grew up really wanting to believe that there was nothing more powerful than a brilliant political joke.' John O'Farrell, author, scriptwriter and now editor of the comedy website, NewsBiscuit, looks at the political power of comedy.
I really wanted to believe that Harold Macmillan's Tory government was toppled from power by some snappy one-liners from David Frost and a few studenty sketches directed by Ned Sherrin. In my world-view, Central American dictators could not be overthrown until Not the Nine O'Clock News was translated into Spanish. I had bought a book entitled Wit as Weapon, which described the importance of cabaret in 1930s Berlin for articulating opposition to the Nazis. But at the back of my mind was a nagging worry. 'Hang on...' I thought. 'Weren't the Nazis in quite a powerful position by the end of the 1930s?'
The trouble is that a pithy satirical skit can be of limited use against somebody with a really big army. When William the Conqueror was besieging a castle south of Normandy, the defending soldiers mocked the fact that William was the bastard son of a tanner's daughter by hanging leather hides over the side of the ramparts. But then he captured the castle and had all their hands and feet chopped off. Apart from that, he could take a joke just as well as the next man.
It's no accident that despots have always reserved a particular fury for anyone who mocked them, for there is nothing more humiliating for a pompous dictator than being laughed at. Perhaps that's why they always refused to take part in Comic Relief.
Exposing unspoken truths
Ever since Aristophanes was prosecuted for writing satires that brought Athens into disrepute, the authorities have disliked political comedy. Because you can't argue with the sound of laughter - you can't say: 'Actually, that joke doesn't work, because in fact that wasn't our policy at the time...'. A good joke can detonate an unspoken truth, bring its all-powerful target down to the same level as the rest of us - not to mention the good it does for the morale of those without power. What I'm trying to claim is that a sketch showing a latex Mrs Thatcher puppet having a wee in a men's urinal is a courageous stand for democracy and not at all a cheap toilet gag. Nonetheless, during years of writing political comedy - whether for Spitting Image, Have I Got News For You, or in newspaper columns - I gradually came to realise that the power of jokes is still rather limited. Amnesty's comedy fundraisers have been going since 1976, but the first to be called The Secret Policeman's Ball was in 1979- not only the summer that Mrs Thatcher came to power, but also the year that The Comedy Store gave birth to 'alternative comedy'.
Political humour thrived throughout the 1980s, but then so did Mrs Thatcher. At no point did she think 'Oh no, this satire is too biting for me. I may have seen off the Argentinian army and the miners, but frankly, Ben Elton's gag about me having to go on top when I have sex with Denis is more than I can take...'. We never had UN joke inspectors going into Iraq to check on Saddam's secret sarcasm programme. You can't expect political jokes to do that much damage. Unless they become President of course.
Adding sugar to the pill
However, there are occasions when comedy can be very powerful - and that is what happened at The Secret Policeman's Ball on 14 October. Because I have a hunch that if Amnesty International had booked the Albert Hall, and then got some local volunteers to read out some of the distressing case studies of individual prisoners of conscience, then a few of the seats at the back might have remained empty. Many of the stories that Amnesty has to tell can be pretty grim, but when great comedy puts so much sugar on the pill, there are millions who are prepared to listen. As a teenager, I first became aware of Amnesty through the first Secret Policeman's Ball; because my comedy heroes were publicly supporting the organisation, I wanted to as well. Indeed, I felt passionately that anyone who didn't support Amnesty should be locked up for ever without trial, until it was explained to me that I was rather missing the point.
It is quite likely that the audience at The Secret Policeman's Ball just came to have a good laugh and why not? But take a moment to reflect that an event like this could never happen in places like Burma or North Korea. They wouldn't understand a word the comics were saying, for a start. Comedy and music are uplifting and liberating expressions of free speech, so what better way to celebrate the release of prisoners who were locked up just for voicing an opinion?
Of course, there are times when a joke simply isn't appropriate. I was once asked by Amnesty International to take part in a very sombre and moving event at which British authors read out pieces of work by writers who'd suffered imprisonment in their own country. I chose Jeffrey Archer. That seemed to go down quite well.
Amnesty Magazine, November/December 2006
