Complainant
Honeymonsters
Point of Appeal
Fun Round - Joke should have been read out
Joke
"It all makes sense now why Rolf Harris got excited when he got told he'd be looking at helpless young beavers on Animal Hospital"
Appeal
"If you can't make a joke about a paedo antipodean, what can you joke about?"
Context
The subjective nature of humour makes for a rich debating ground with regard to censorship of fun round entries.
Topical news stories regarding celebrities should be a rich source of pub quiz jokes, but this particular joke seemed to gain too much of it's humour from the imagined exitement of the alleged perpetrator of a sex crime and the vulnerability of the victim.
A re-wording of the joke to change the emphasis would be required - so that neither the entertainer (whose career will suffer from these as yet unproven allegations) or the 'helpless' animal are the victims of the joke.
As this was a busy night I did not have the time to alter the joke myself into something that cast the victim as the teller of the joke and shared the blame a little more with the media. The below, for example, would have been more acceptable:
"I saw a special Animal Hospital last night where Rolf Harris was talking about kittens. Given what I've heard, I'm surprised the BBC trust him around all that young pussy."
Ruling
This particular joke was on the cusp of being read out. It may have been that on a different night, with a more intimate and attentive crowd it would have been read out with a disclaimer. However, the standard Fun Round rule remains - that the teams are allowed to enter whatever they wish, and it is at the quizmaster's discretion to read out whatever they wish.
Case Dismissed?
Have your say below...
Honeymonsters
Point of Appeal
Fun Round - Joke should have been read out
Joke
"It all makes sense now why Rolf Harris got excited when he got told he'd be looking at helpless young beavers on Animal Hospital"
Appeal
"If you can't make a joke about a paedo antipodean, what can you joke about?"
Context
The subjective nature of humour makes for a rich debating ground with regard to censorship of fun round entries.
Topical news stories regarding celebrities should be a rich source of pub quiz jokes, but this particular joke seemed to gain too much of it's humour from the imagined exitement of the alleged perpetrator of a sex crime and the vulnerability of the victim.
A re-wording of the joke to change the emphasis would be required - so that neither the entertainer (whose career will suffer from these as yet unproven allegations) or the 'helpless' animal are the victims of the joke.
As this was a busy night I did not have the time to alter the joke myself into something that cast the victim as the teller of the joke and shared the blame a little more with the media. The below, for example, would have been more acceptable:
"I saw a special Animal Hospital last night where Rolf Harris was talking about kittens. Given what I've heard, I'm surprised the BBC trust him around all that young pussy."
Ruling
This particular joke was on the cusp of being read out. It may have been that on a different night, with a more intimate and attentive crowd it would have been read out with a disclaimer. However, the standard Fun Round rule remains - that the teams are allowed to enter whatever they wish, and it is at the quizmaster's discretion to read out whatever they wish.
Case Dismissed?
Have your say below...
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