Roger Cox, writing in The Scotsman, examines the questions raised by a recent issue involving a comic and the second most popular British radio station.

COMEDIAN Sean Hughes has been moaning online this week about the fact that he’s been censored by BBC Radio 4.

The station apparently asked him to do a ten-minute spot at Glastonbury, to be aired two days later at 11pm, only to cut the first joke which began: “So yesterday I was getting a blow job off one of the Archers…”

(In case you’re wondering, “The Archers” is a long-running, much loved British radio soap-opera, which is the “everyday story of country folk.”)

Cox rightly hints that there’s enough blame to go around– Both the station and the comedian acted irresponsibly and both seemed to be in denial.

But he seems to come down on the side of the comic, and on the side of totally unfettered free speech.

To make his argument, he sites the example of the court jester:

Part of what makes comedy funny is its ability to shock. Today’s comedians are direct descendants of court jesters. They should have fool’s licence– free rein to say the unsayable, to talk about issues that others can’t or won’t.

We would counter that they often do, in fact, have such license. That license, however, is often restricted– and on BBC 4, even “two hours after the TV watershed,” one apparently doesn’t have the license to say the unsayable. This is not a horrific concept, nor is it difficult to understand.

It is one thing to state that “part of what makes comedy funny is its ability to shock.” But it is quite another thing to say that a statement that is merely shocking is automatically funny. Or that a funny statement that is also shocking automatically has acquired some sort of historical and sociological heft. And conversely, that the merely funny– the gag that doesn’t cause us to change our dastardly ways or oust the current regime from office or cure cancer– isn’t somehow worthy of our time and serious attention. (We suspect that Hughes’ opening joke was merely shocking– otherwise, we would have been treated to that which followed the ellipse.)

As for the matter of the court jester having license “to say the unsayable,” we must remind Mr. Cox that jesters took great care and even at that, they sometimes paid dearly when their jesting fell flat. Wikipedia says that “even the jester was not entirely immune from punishment, and he needed to walk a thin line and exercise careful judgement in how far he might go– which required him to be far from a “fool” in the modern sense.” So, one could argue that saying the unsayable, but saying it in such a way as to avoid sanction, is an admirable and necessary skill. And being asked to employ such a skill– during, let’s say, a broadcast on the UK’s second most popular radio network– might be what separates an admired, authentic truth-teller from a fool.

The Wikipedia entry also goes on to site the most famous case of an eventually disgraced jester named Archibald Armstrong who went too far too many times and angered too many influential people.

Even after his disgrace books were sold in London streets of his jests. He held some influence at court still in the reign of Charles I and estates of land in Ireland.

So, it seems like a familiar pattern: Cause a splash with shocking humor, experience high-profile, public shame, watch book sales rise and continue to have influence and a degree of success. Archibald Armstrong, it seems, was the Bill Maher of his day. This pattern has repeated itself for more than three centuries.