Rosie Jones

[andy-hughes]

Is anyone else apart from me made deeply uncomfortable by watching and listening to Rosie Jones?

My discomfort has less to do with the fact that, due to her cerebral palsy, her delivery is necessarily slow, and her speech sometimes hard to follow.

It's due purely and simply down to the fact that she is not funny.

Make a joke of a condition has always been a one-trick pony, and there is a seriously short limit to the amount of time you can mask your discomfort by laughing along with someone laughing at themselves and the cards nature has dealt them.

Once that's gone, no matter how you are delivering your lines, as a comedian, you are required to be funny, and she is not funny at all.

I believe that it is the sheer 'right-on'-ness of audiences telling themselves how much they are better than everyone else because they embrace someone's difficulties, and applaud their ability to laugh at them, strictly in the context at all.

But strip that away, and if you the same material was being delivered by someone without Ms Jones's personal challenges, and she would not get a gig on a street corner, never mind on television.

Any thoughts?

[emily1890]

thanks for posting about rosie jones. I was going to, but didn't want to come across insensitive

I don't like her.
I tried watching trip hazard, where she goes with famous celebrities around the UK- but I just can't.

her voice gets to me, (I know she has a disability and can't help it, but it still scares me a little)

she is also loud and screechy, like has been said, and loud and screechy people I've never really liked (disability or not)

and every other joke is about said disability

or if it's not,, it's some X rated joke that's not really funny

good for her though for actually being on tv, (not that she's funny or good,), but seeing more disabled people recognised isn't a bad thing when you consider the stigman

[andy-hughes]

emily - // good for her though for actually being on tv, (not that she's funny or good,), but seeing more disabled people recognised isn't a bad thing when you consider the stigma. //

I think this is the root of the issue.

As I said, if Ms Jones was not a disabled comedian, she would not be a comedian, because she is not funny, and that's something of a handicap (!) to being seen as a funny person.

We have to accept that inclusivity does not mean that everyone can do everything, and do it well.

Blind people can't be pilots, deaf people can't be crossing wardens, wheelchair users can't be sprinters ... the list goes on and on.

We are doing no-one any kind of service by pretending that overlooking someone's disability to the extent that their job title is misplaced.

It's not 'inclusivity', it's being afraid being thought of as insensitive - the very point with which you opened your post.

And no-one should be made to feel like that.

Clearly I do not, as can be seen from my posts, but I think that society is doing itself, and some of its members, any good with this kind of inverse patronising.

[Peter Pedant]

bit like Alexei Sayle as a marxist stand up...
oh

[barry1010]

I remember what she said about Greta Thunberg on The Last Leg. If her intention was to shock she succeeded.

[andy-hughes]

barry - // I remember what she said about Greta Thunberg on The Last Leg. If her intention was to shock she succeeded. //

Not seen it - as advised I avoid anything she is on, unless it's Cats Does Countdown.

Maybe she he straying into the Frankie Boyle style of 'comedy', where audiences laugh as a release of tension because they are deeply shocked by what they have heard.

The problem is, a 'tension relief' laugh is indistinguishable from an 'amused' laugh, which is why TV people think Frankie Boyle is a funny comedian, when in fact he is a reprehensible human being posing as a funny comedian.

[barry1010]

It was a couple of years ago, around Christmas.