How soon is too soon to joke about the crimes of Jimmy Savile? In comedy, gags about Savile's transgressions were being cracked before (in one instance years before) he was cold in his grave. But I was still surprised by the number – and brazenness – of the Savile gags at last week's Royal Free Rocks with Laughter charity gig. Here was Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield's cheesy DJ double-act Smashie and Nicey, faux-apologising for past indiscretions. ("Our only crime was that we didn't ask to see people's passports before we took off their school uniforms.") Here was Lee Mack, joking that "shut that door!" wasn't just Larry Grayson's catchphrase, but Savile's too.
It's clear, then, that – in live comedy at least – no one feels any further need to apologise for Operation Yewtree material. But should they? Last year, researchers at the University of Colorado tried to pinpoint the moment when it stops being "too soon" to joke about public tragedies. Their algorithm referenced the severity of the joke, and the audience's psychological distance from the incident in question. Which is fine in principle, but doesn't give comedians much to go on. How do you know how severe your joke is until you try it, and gauge the reaction? At least South Park laid down clear rules, when it established that major tragedies (its example was Aids) become funny after precisely 22.3 years.
All standups, though, would passionately defend their right – responsibility, even – to joke about anything, at any time. The comic Boothby Graffoe remembers cracking a 9/11 gag at the Comedy Store ("that's the trouble with twins – one gets an aeroplane, the other one has to have an aeroplane") hours after the World Trade Center was hit. Comedians are competitive; they want to be first to the funny. They know that a bad-taste gag is a near-guaranteed laugh – even if the laughter is more nervous than amused. And they believe that one of the purposes of humour is to help us deal with tragedy and pain.
Sometimes, that's just a figleaf for gags that trade on easy shock value – witness, say, Harry Hill's ventriloquism routine, with his puppet son Gary decked out as Savile. Not all comics are as brilliant as Jerry Sadowitz, who was joking about Savile's proclivities decades before the truth came out, and who did so again, in full Savile bling and with gleeful savagery, at his London shows this time last year. Nothing cheap about that: Sadowitz didn't reduce the horror of Savile's crimes, he revelled in it. As for the Smashie and Nicey routine – given that the characters are based on DJs from the Savile era, how could Whitehouse and Enfield not broach recent revelations?
They had a certain licence, too, because they were performing on a live comedy stage – where propriety's norms are relaxed. The BBC works to a different standard, as Chris Evans found out in September when the tabloids upbraided him for impersonating Savile on-air. Testing the boundaries of good taste is a dangerous game when the taxpayer is funding it. I wouldn't expect to hear Savile jokes on the BBC for another 22.3 years at least.
