Dapper Laughs is back, and this time he’s a feminist, apparently. Not having seen his show On the Pull, I was a bystander to the series of events a year ago after Dapper – aka Daniel O’Reilly – was axed from ITV2 amid accusations that his comedy was degrading to women. There were reports of an ugly rape joke at a live gig; O’Reilly credibly claims the comments were taken out of context. Later, penitent and seemingly in shock, he cancelled his tour and killed off the Dapper character in an interview with Emily Maitlis on Newsnight. And then, a couple of weeks later, he resurrected it. Now, he’s released his first DVD, of a performance at the Clapham Grand in south London – and I’ve watched it so you don’t have to.
I did so to see what the fuss was about – or to see whether there was no further need for fuss, given O’Reilly’s pronouncements in several recent interviews. “If you ask me if I consider myself a feminist, I’d say yeah,” he told campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez in an interview for On Demand News. This will raise an eyebrow or three among those party to his pre-telly work on the video-sharing app Vine: six-second bursts of public sexism, mainly. But now, “you’ll be surprised by what we’ve got coming up in relation to sexual harassment and lad culture,” he told the Radio Times. “I’m trying to educate the fans, and show people I’ve learned there’s a bit more to it.”
As that Radio Times interview points out, in the new DVD he doesn’t quite (OK, doesn’t remotely) deliver on those promises. It dials down the boorishness of Vine-era Dapper, but only just. It’s basically a bog-standard, old-school “blue” comedy set, which addresses “fat birds” and bangers, willies and fingering – and not much else.
There aren’t many identifiable jokes: Dapper is clearly no great wit, nor blessed with evident comic skill – as opposed to showmanship, of which he has plenty. A typical line runs: “my mum’s got cracking boobs – I should know, I’ve sucked ’em.” A typical routine depicts a randy bloke trying to conceal his erection. Questions are invited from the crowd, in which there are as many women as men. And questions are duly put: “Would you shag the stupid lesbo twats at the front?” To which Dapper responds: “I’ll fuck anything, mate.”
So: I haven’t discovered my new favourite comedian. But I do think the Dapper saga is interesting, partly because of another of O’Reilly’s lines of defence, which is “people like yourself need to have a lot more respect for the intelligence of my audience,” as he told his Radio Times interviewer. “They understand that Dapper Laughs is an exaggerated character.”
His first point has some purchase: the row over his comedy prised open class and cultural fissures. On the one hand, you’ve got the pro-Dapper camp loathing the “prim police” and “the chattering classes”. On the other, you’ve the implication that Dapper is speaking for, and likely to influence, a feral or imbecilic underclass (or “sad young douchebags”, according to this Vice article). As O’Reilly points out, the outrage is more contained when well-spoken Jimmy Carr cracks a rape joke, and Carr doesn’t have his TV shows axed (although Frankie Boyle does.)
That argument runs only so far. Jimmy Carr never set himself up as a gender relations role model, as Dapper did; he also happens to be a skilled joke writer. Nor should we take it at face value when Dapper claims he’s being victimised because he and his fans are working-class. There’s nothing inherently or exclusively working-class about lairy machismo.
With the latter, “exaggerated character” claim, O’Reilly is on shakier ground. Watching his DVD gig, there’s zero sense that (like Lee Nelson, say) he’s adopting a fake persona to send up or exaggerate “lad” attitudes. Rather, he’s playing them for real, and celebrating them. By far the most fruitful feature of the DVD is the opposition it sets up between “Dapper” and O’Reilly: the former mocks the latter, face-to-face, in a sketch at the start, for having capitulated to Maitlis on Newsnight.
But that distinction soon collapses, as Dapper discusses onstage his (as opposed to O’Reilly’s) appearance on Newsnight. (He also tells us how, throughout the interview, he was looking at Maitlis and thinking, “you fucking want it, don’t ya?”) There isn’t much logic, then, to when O’Reilly is and isn’t in character.
That uncertainty can be potent, of course – Stewart Lee, to cite one example, enjoys blurring the line between himself and his stage alter ego. But with O’Reilly, it just looks cowardly, as he says one (remorseful, pious) thing to one audience and another (defiant, swaggering) to his fans.
That’s a shame: he should probe deeper into the faultlines between O’Reilly and Dapper. For now, by being craven (and indeed by not being a very talented comedian), Dapper makes himself easy to dismiss. But his saga throws up niggling questions. Does Dapper represent (or misrepresent) a culture – “lad culture” – and is that culture beyond the pale? What would it look like if Dapper were, as he (when it suits him) claims to be, both a feminist and a celebrant of lad values? Maybe then we’d have a comic who justified all that attention – one capable of building bridges, perhaps, and of diluting the mutual hostility by which British cultural life often seems characterised.
Three to see
Nath Valvo
“Luridly honest [and] devilishly funny,” said The Age in Melbourne of Aussie comic Valvo’s confessional comedy show about the gay dating app Grindr. Three years on, the show makes its UK debut.
- At Soho Theatre, London from Wednesday 25 November to December 5.
Phil Wang
Droll if low-energy standup from one-third of the fast-rising sketch group Daphne, whose new show Philth – premiered on the Edinburgh fringe – explores the 24-year-old’s love life.
- At Invisible Dot, London from Thursday 26 to Saturday 28 November.
Austentatious
A handful of pre-Christmas shows for the Regency-themed long-form improv troupe – which features Edinburgh Comedy Award nominees Cariad Lloyd and Joseph Morpurgo – begin with a one-off Edinburgh gig.
- At St Andrews Square, Edinburgh on Friday 27 November,
