Dark Humour

Jimmy Carr bombing at the Q Awards, is an illustration of how humour has lost something along the way to absolute purity in political correctness. I enjoy dark humour – it must be something to do with my psyche. I smiled when I read the comments. They were wonderfully tasteless – and that’s the point. That people bristled because they deemed them “inappropriate” or “offensive” merely tells us something about their purse-lipped puritanical view of the world. It’s a dark place and the macabre, the tasteless and laughing at tragedy is funny, if you know how to look. If you can loosen up and stop, just for once, being so damned uptight.

I recall once looking at the dismembered torso of a woman who had stepped in front of the train. While awaiting the coroner to send someone to pronounce death – the lack of a head and bits of brain matter spread along several hundred yards of track was something of a give-away – I and a police officer exchanged some pretty dark jokes. It’s life. Well, and death sometimes. If you can’t laugh at it how can you face it?

Carr’s jokes were pretty tame and there was a time when people would have genuinely laughed for all the right reasons. Not today. Today we have lost our sense of humour. Well, the dark side anyway.