Skip to main content

Romesh Ranganathan: ‘I’ll stop talking about race when I stop experiencing racism’

Is it OK to tell Irish jokes in a fake Sri Lankan accent? The comedian on talent shows, trolls and his right to offend

My first ever gig was at a Pontins holiday camp when I was nine. It had a talent competition and I decided to enter as a standup, with a book of jokes from which I took all of my material. A lot of the jokes seemed to have no problem playing with the stereotype of Irish people being stupid. They were incredibly racist, but the bigger crime here, comedy-wise, was that my set was entirely built on stolen material.

There was a joke about a man buying a Rolls-Royce who is a bit short of cash. He goes out into the street to see if someone can lend him 10p to make up the price. He bumps into an Irish man – we know he’s Irish, because his name is Paddy. Paddy says, “Here’s 20p. Buy me one as well.”

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2xYGVVP
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dita Von Teese: ‘Even when I was a bondage model, I had big-time boundaries’

As the star dives into a giant glass of fizz for her first online extravaganza, she talks about this new golden age for burlesque, why the French Strictly gives her costume problems – and how #MeToo has changed her Dita Von Teese is looking divine. Her lips are that signature red, she’s wearing 1950s cat eye glasses, and her black hair falls in a thick wave across a Snow White skin – and all this on the unglamorous stage of a glitchy Zoom call. Only knowing Von Teese from her femme fatale image, her teasingly aloof burlesque performances, and her time in the tabloids as former wife of goth rocker Marilyn Manson , you might expect an icy demeanour, an impermeable mystique. So it’s surprising to discover quite how normal she is: chatty, self-deprecating, not very vampish. It’s easy to see traces of Heather Sweet, the “super shy” girl from small-town Michigan who transformed into Von Teese. The reason for our conversation is a new film, Night of the Teese, made with director Quinn Wils...
Post a Comment
Read more