DAVID Jason has a joke - iot;s nto that funny and excplaisn why actors need scriopts:
Sir David Jason was embroiled in a race row today after making a ‘joke’ about Pakistanis on live radio. The Del Boy actor made the remarks on the Christian O’Connell Breakfast Show on Absolute Radio. On the ‘Who’s Calling Christian’ feature - where celebrities ring up with a chance to win £20,000 for charity - Jason was asked to leave a question for the next guest.
Sir David, 69, replied:
“What do you call a Pakistani cloakroom attendant?” Following a brief pause, he then delivered the punch line: ‘Me hat, me coat.’
The Mail senses outrage at the “racist” joke (the paper puts the word racist in brackets; and isn’t the “joke” what do you call an Indian..?)
Looking for offended parties, the Mail hears from Mr Mohammed Shafiq, of the Ramadhan Foundation, who says:
“These are inappropriate remarks about a stereotype that may have held a little water in the 50’s and 60’s but is not true to today… He should have known better.”
Might this be the same Mr Shafiq head of the Ramadhan Foundation which has a website, where he claims that the government of Israel is like that of the Nazis.
(Funny how Israel - land of Jews - is compared to Nazis. Wonder why that is… Read: BBC Bias Against Israel.)
The organization’s Chairman and Patron is one Muhammad Umar - his web page “headed with an image of Umar ‘presenting Services to Humanity award‘ [sic] to Mahathir bin Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia. Here are some of the words of bin Mohamad, offered in the Service of Humanity”:
The Jews for example are not merely hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively.
The Jews robbed the Palestinians of everything, but in Malaysia they could not do so, hence they do this, depress the ringgit.
We [Muslims] are actually very strong, 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Nazis killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million [during the Holocaust]. But today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them. They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries. And they, this tiny community, have become a world power.
It’s all about context, you see…
File under: beyond a joke…
Posted: 25th, March 2009 | In: Media Comments (25) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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April 28th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
How absoloutly rediculous, makes me so angry.
What on earth is offensive about that! Everyone should get off there high horse, if I was from Pakistan I would be more annoyed with all these middle class stuck up morons tryin to defend little old me. It would be embaressing.
Its a sad day when someone like SIR David Jason is labelled a racist. Absoloutly pathetic, am fuming.
April 11th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Hellfire! Do you people just wait around to be offended? you sad lot.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Mahatma isn’t even a name, it’s a reverential title bestowed on someone considered to be a ‘great soul’. Being a hindi word, it would certainly not be used in the predominantly muslim country that is Pakistan, the creation of which was a parting gift made by the British in 1947 in keeping with the tried and tested tradition of ‘divide and conquer’. But hey, who cares about all that anyway. The word Pakistani was only used by Sir Jason as a polite extension of ‘paki’ which is a common derogatory term used for any brown person with a foreign sounding name in the UK.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:23 am
So, the very honourable Sir Jason thinks it’s ok to go on radio and ask you lot to join in his own personal contempt for a another ethinic group…. and clearly many of you want to join him. Fair enuff….except Gandhi wasn’t a Pakistani and Mahatma is not a Pakistani name . So, If you find the joke funny…. it’s only cause you’re ignorant…. or… you were racist anyway with a deep unrational hatred for Pakistanis that when you’re confronted about it, you struggle to give a meanignful answer as to why you hate Pakistanis…. cos to find yourself hating another ethinc group without good cause would be…… well racist.. no??
March 27th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
I’ve just read about this so-called joke and must admit that it took me a while to actually ‘get it’. The play on words seems to be ‘Mahatma Coat’ - anyone who finds this funny is obviously completely ignorant of the fact that the word ‘mahatma’ is not actually a name but a reverential title. It is a hindu word and, since Pakistan was created in 1947 as a parting gift by the British to seperate muslims from hindus, I don’t see why this name would be applied to a muslim, non-hindi-speaking nation. But hey - who cares about such details when all you’re trying to do is have a laugh at the expense of brown people with foreign names.
As to why the word ‘paki’ is offensive, just ask anyone with brown skin who grew up in England as to the context in which they have heard this term over the years. It would be great if people could use it in the same way as Scot, Aussie or Brit, but I feel there is some way to go before we reach that stage . . .
By the way, if anyone wants to see an ‘asian comedian’ following the great western tradition of ridiculing other races because of accent/colour/culture, look up Russell Peters on YouTube - you’ll find him hilarious.
March 27th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
anything David Jason says or does is brilliant as far as I’m concerned. To the DJ on the radio station and anyone else offended by such as silly joke - get a life!!!
March 27th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
…..Whiteys & Jade Goody
March 27th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
the UK has gone totally mad with political correctness and this nonsense about the me hat me coat joke just proves it. What is next? Do we ban all jokes that start ‘There was an Scotsman, and Englishman and and Irishman’? I am Scottish and am able to laugh at so-called Scottish jokes and the ‘See You Jimmy’ tartan hats. Of course David Jason did not mean any offence. I read that the radio station did not even receive any complaints, so what is the big deal here? Are there actually any Asian comedians, I don’t know? If there are, what do they make jokes about?
March 27th, 2009 at 11:41 am
We are allowed to be xenophobes, Ant. It’s the islander’s way. Everyone over the waters is suspect, but not necessarily to be hated. Thanks for responding so rationally. It’s a pleasant surprise that new or irregular posters - and some regulars (I’m looking at you, me - on occasion, anyway) are that way.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:26 am
…and back to the joke, it’s not racist. It’s just a play on words. It does not denigrate a person, country or race. Note the separation of country and race here.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:21 am
@magnetite, I agree with you to a degree, but I never did tack on those words. I just think its bollocks that those of us who aren’t racist (in the true sense of the term not the PC one, which is just downright ridiculous and extreme) can’t abbreviate a place of origin. Pathetic.
Don’t worry, I won’t be offended if you call me a Sax.
March 26th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
How bloody stupid is UK becoming and so obsessed with being PC when the oldest joke in the book is held up to be racist. The world has gone mad?
One of the icons of British comedy, a thoroughly decent man is made to feel like this - THATS a crime! Make me seeth all this BS
March 26th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
When you think about it, very, very few English people are pure-bred Angles, if they even exist at all any more. We’re all a bit French, Scandinavian and Roman, with lots of other stuff chucked in recently (on a timescale since 1066 or so, anyway). We’re all immigrants or descendants of immigrants; some have just been here longer than others.
You Saxon, you.
March 26th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Ant? Perhaps because it usually has the words ‘Go back home, you fucking’ tacked on to the front of it and is usually spat, not spoken. We used to do the same to the Scots, Welsh and Irish. The Scots pissed on our wall, the Irish (not all) blew up our soldiers and the Welsh…gave us Max Boyce.
Iin the Windrush years, we (you) got upset if those newcomers took umbrage at being called blackies, wogs and coons, darkies, jigaboos and nig-nogs. (See Love They Neighbour and Mind Your Language for reference of our cheeky past).
Remember that ‘In Sickness and In Health’ was satire, intended partly to kill off that attitude by simply having a cheerfully racist protagonist who always received his comeuppance for his ways, but never seemed to learn from it.
I dread to think what the Pakistani immigrants will piss on, blow up or give us when they get sick of our ‘good natured’ abuse. Like everyone else has eventually.
March 26th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
And while I’m on the subject… an earlier commenter made a joke about a Scotsman, which won’t offend many (if any) Scots. Why do Pakistanis get offended at the word Paki - a 4 letter abbreviation of Pakistani, whilst Brits and Aussies take no offence to those abbreviations. Why is it that they are so ashamed of where they come from?
March 26th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
How pathetic things have become. We have let ourselves (as a nation) get bullied by the PC brigade into being scared to mention anything about foreigners - Asians in particular. David Jason should be ashamed of himself pandering to the idiots. He made a joke about a play on a name, not a nation or a race.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
…I just brushed it off….
March 26th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
No need to get all emulsional about it
March 26th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I get a lot of stick because of my name.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
…that’s gone and taken the gloss right off that joke….
March 26th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Is it Matt Black?
March 26th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
What do you call a 325 lbs Ethiopian Black Jewish (Falasha) wrestler?
“Sir” would be an acceptable and quite correct way to start the conversation.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I think David Jason should apologise for apologising. How the hell you can be offended by that ABSOLUTEly beats me. get a sense of humour you sad gits.
March 25th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Offended not offendendended
March 25th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Just to even things up. What do you call a scottish cloakroom attendant?
Angus MacCoatup
I am sorry if I have offendended any Scots