Comedian Russell Brand during a less controversial charity performance. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
Russell Brand is the focus of considerable anger after making an onstage prank call to an emergency rape line set up by police. The stunt took place at a gig in Northampton and referred to a series of local sexual attacks in underpasses.
Although his substance-abusing days are supposedly behind him, it makes you wonder how much crack Brand smoked before believing that this was a good idea. It shows catastrophically poor judgment to even touch upon recent sexual attacks never mind the irresponsible method he chose.
As rape conviction rates in the UK stay at a woeful 6% (in the 1970s they nudged over 30%) police can do without an open invitation to hoaxers using real-life sexual assaults to get cheap laughs with copycat prank calls. Hilarious. Any second now I'm sure to start laughing. It confirms what we have long suspected: there's no 12-step recovery plan for stupidity.
Brand has apologised now, and I think we can take it that the rape prank call is now dead as a comedic device. But it raises the question: are joke calls ever relevant or even funny? Rory Bremner believed he had uncovered a modern-day Watergate with his 'Gordon Brown' call to Margaret Beckett but in truth Mike Maguire impersonating Kevin Keegan and getting Sven Goran Eriksson to reveal that David Beckham was his new England captain was politically more significant.
And while Fonejacker gets more laughs per pound from the YouTube primates than anyone breathing, most of his targets seem to have at least half a clue they are being spoofed. Which raises the obvious question: what's the point?
It could be that when they are carried out correctly, fake phone calls are very funny. Victor Lewis-Smith had a real flair for the ridiculous with his calls - he was brilliantly economical and never outstaying his welcome. Then Chris Morris blended the mundane and the weird superbly for moments like his inspired Airport Information call. And Ken Korda's valiant attempts to impress Hollywood studios with Toyah Wilcox and Dale Winton never fail to make me chuckle.
So I don't think the prank call is a lost cause. It boils down to the quality of the material and the choice of victim. Concentrating on minimum-wage call-centre drones like Fonejacker does is tedious, and although Indian call centres may be legitimate targets for satire, making foreigners' mispronunciation your sole focus is cheap.
If you can illuminate the world in a new way, highlight some hypocrisy or bureaucratic absurdity then prank away. But if you're just a sniggering schoolkid who never grew out of phoning the long harassed and now ex-directory Mr Cockring then you need to start work on some new ideas. Otherwise these prank calls would be best going straight to the answerphone.
