"Since when is sexual assault funny?"

Former Member · May 2008

WLH wrote: »

I always thought being an alcoholic/drug addict was regarded as cool in the media though? Rock stars for example.

It's not cool, nor is it portrayed as being so. He's portrayed as a pathetic character and like so many other comedians and writers (Ricky Gervais, for example), draws his comedy from that.

Former Member · May 2008

I have no idea where I have picked it up from, but I'm fairly sure he is supposed to be a talented script writer. Didnt he go over the US for a while to do that?

I know that sounds like it isnt relevant, but I guess I'm trying to point out that his act is just that, an act.

As for this assault - its incredibly hard to comment without being there, but it certainly sounds like it was at least unpleasant and quite possibly nasty.

Former Member · May 2008

If anyone wants an idea of the sort of thing we could be talking about here, play this video between 1:55 and 3:00.

Indrid Cold · May 2008

I'm With Stupid wrote: »

If anyone wants an idea of the sort of thing we could be talking about here, play this video between 1:55 and 3:00.

All of a sudden, the story seems more likely to me. But I still don't really believe it, for the same reason I said above...

Former Member · May 2008

He's a twat...not funny...but him in the same bin as Avid Merrion - neither are remotely funny in any context.

Former Member · May 2008

Martin_Bashir wrote: »

He's a twat...not funny...but him in the same bin as Avid Merrion - neither are remotely funny in any context.

He's not funny I agree, but was it sexual assault?

I assume if it was the press would still be raving, maybe upon further investigation it turned out there was no more evidence than some people ranting in their blogs. Poor journalism, non story.

Former Member · May 2008

The original link didnt work for me, took me to Guardian webpage and said they couldnt find what the link was suppose to link to. So i have no idea what happened... anyone got another link to read the article?

Teh_Gerbil · May 2008

WLH wrote: »

I always thought being an alcoholic/drug addict was regarded as cool in the media though? Rock stars for example.

Yeah, 'cos Lemmy is always on the front page, and he IS Rock n Roll.

Oh wait, he isn't.

No, you need to be a complete and utter social reject idiot for Media Attention. MANY bands live the Rock n Roll Lifestyle to the full, Motorhead have been doing it forever. You need to be a fuckup (Docherty, that stupid woman who's name I forget who won some award despite being shit.) to get Media attention.

Former Member · May 2008

Hmm, it's mysteriously no longer working. Possibly taken down what are essentially claims of criminal activity against an individual that they have no evidence for?

Ah, you can always trust the Mirror to continue running bullshit. But the original Guardian article was certainly more sure of themselves that this Mirror one, which only talks about allegations of sexual assault.

Former Member · May 2008

Bullseye wrote: »

The original link didnt work for me, took me to Guardian webpage and said they couldnt find what the link was suppose to link to. So i have no idea what happened... anyone got another link to read the article?

Reckon the original article has been pulled because a lot of what was said could probably be slander / libel

(implying it definitely was sexual assault). But there are plenty of links to similar news stories and some more by the guardian:

http://news.google.co.uk/news?q=johnny%20vegas&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wn

The one that it was is the 'since when was sexual assault funny'.

Former Member · May 2008

No assault took place!

No assault took place. Mary O'Hara's Guardian article has been comprehensively discredited by numerous eyewitnesses. The victim here is Vegas who's reputation has been shredded by the offending article and the chinese whispers of the very many blogs which quoted it.

The article is now the subject of a 'legal complaint' by Vegas, and it and the accompanying blog have been removed from the Guardian website.

Former Member · May 2008

Mick Hannigan wrote: »

No assault took place. Mary O'Hara's Guardian article has been comprehensively discredited by numerous eyewitnesses. The victim here is Vegas who's reputation has been shredded by the offending article and the chinese whispers of the very many blogs which quoted it.

The article is now the subject of a 'legal complaint' by Vegas, and it and the accompanying blog have been removed from the Guardian website.

Yea I read some sources had said he 'raped someone on stage'. Ridiculous tbh.

Still, vegas is still not my kind of humour

give me a bit of wit / irony anyday!

edit: I've included the original article for reference purposes. If (since it seems to be caught in the middle of some kind of slander issue) a mod thinks its more sensible to remove it feel free to!

Original Article wrote:

I go to comedy gigs almost every week, but I've never seen anything quite like what I witnessed at the Bloomsbury theatre in London last Friday night. Like many people I've often left gigs offended. That's stand-up. If you go regularly you need a thick hide - a good comedian will often say or do something that offends you and, if you're in the front row, you may well be targeted for public ridicule. Until Friday, however, I had never left a gig feeling disgusted.

Along with hundreds of others I watched a set during which Johnny Vegas, without any discernible artistic or comedic merit, gratuitously groped a young woman on stage. Judging from some of the furious postings on the internet that followed the gig, I was not the only person asking if he had crossed a line.

Vegas stepped on stage to cheers and immediately announced that he had no material, and that he was there mostly to get laid. There followed a short meandering ramble (mainly about lap dancers) before he turned his attention to the audience - and to one young woman in particular in the front row who, he announced, he wanted to be "inside". Anyone who has seen Vegas live knows to expect the unexpected, and you take a front row seat at your peril. He can appear deliriously and uncontrollably drunk and casually offensive, and he isn't afraid of injecting a dose of tension by involving members of the audience in his erratic act. But something backfired this time.

The woman he focused on was about 18 or 19 and was very obviously unnerved by his attention. I saw her expression clearly - I was in the front row too, just three seats along. Vegas insisted that she allow herself to be carried on to the stage by six members of the audience - he called them "pall bearers". She must pretend to be dead, he said, and he would bring her back to life with an onstage kiss. He warned her that there probably would be tongues. As James Williams, writing on the NOTBBC forum after the gig, put it, "Honestly, you couldn't have found a nervier or more passive girl if you'd scoured all of London - she was like a rabbit in the headlights, but she was giggling and clearly somewhat enjoying the attention, so it just sort of went ahead without so much as a yes or no from her." As she was carried on stage, Vegas repeatedly goaded one of the pallbearers to "finger" the girl.

Once she was on stage, Vegas told her to lie very still. She couldn't stop her nervous giggling; he threatened to kick her in the ribs. It didn't come across to me as a joke - and near to where I was sitting, no one was laughing. Eventually Vegas crouched down beside the nervous girl and started stroking her breasts while repeatedly saying, "don't fucking move". Then he ran his hand up her leg and began pulling her skirt up. Every time he looked up to address the audience, she would reach down and pull her skirt back down, but he kept pulling it back up. According to Williams, who had a different view of the stage from me, Vegas ended up "fingering her through her clothes for a second or two". What I heard was an audible sharp intake of breath from the audience as they realised that the woman was getting much more than the kiss Vegas had told her to expect.

There was an air of menace from the outset, made worse by the fact that Vegas clearly had no idea where he was going with his act. The more the young woman was groped, the more anxious one of the "pallbearers" looked. Then Vegas straddled the young woman, pinning her to the floor, and kissing her for quite a while. Most disturbing, perhaps was that around half the audience seemed to find this really funny. Vegas asked if the curtain could be brought down; when it wasn't, Simon Munnery, the comedian who had been on stage before him, came on stage and used his coat to screen the pair from the audience.

Back before Vegas was famous, his act often involved him - the shambolic, hapless, self-loathing buffoonish bloke - persuading a woman in the audience to feel sorry for him by letting him give her a quick kiss. It was funny because he had no power. He wasn't famous then. Being famous and the power that it brings changes the dynamic in such a scenario. This time, I could see nothing creative or subversive; just a powerful, famous man on a stage seedily touching up a young woman.

Soon after the gig, a furious exchange began on the internet. James Williams kicked off the debate on NOTBBC.co.uk: "I don't like to think that any area is out of bounds for comedy, even if the comedy is lazy nonsense (which on this occasion, I think it mostly was) - but that really only applies when you're talking about words and ideas. Once you've got someone pinned down on the stage, it becomes a rather different matter. I honestly don't know what to think. Really, did no one else see it?"

Some leapt to Vegas's defence. Others wondered if the issue was whether it was Vegas or his stage "persona" doing the groping, and, if so, what was the underlying point of it. The debate has since evolved to a broader exploration of the boundaries of acceptable behaviour in comedy. One poster (who wasn't at the gig) encapsulates many of the views in a response to Williams: "It's always hard to know with Vegas where the pathos starts and ends - aggression to the audience has always been part of his act."

Others have no such qualms. "I have no problem with the view that comedy should be allowed to address any idea or subject it likes," says Fiona Knight, who is Williams's girlfriend, and was with him at the gig. "Ideas cannot hurt anyone until they are turned into actions. But any performer has a responsibility for what they (or their character/persona) does, just as the audience has a responsibility for its reaction to their actions. For me, at this gig, Johnny Vegas crossed the line from fantasy to reality when he translated his ideas into actions that I thought were unacceptable, and I only wish I had had the guts to say so at the time."

Good comedy is frequently uncomfortable for those watching. Brendon Burns, last year's If.comedy winner at the Edinburgh Fringe, is brilliant at making his audience feel so awkward they wish they were somew here else, and the previous year's winner, Phil Nichol, spends a lot of his gigs naked for all but his guitar as some of the audience look on in horror. Sometimes, people vote with their feet. I've seen people walk out when the gay comedian, Scott Capurro, got a bit too graphic. Often, as happened at the end of Friday's Vegas gig, some members of the audience withhold their applause.

But like Knight, I wonder if members of the audience - or Stewart Lee, the comedian who hosted the event - should have intervened. The young woman had seemed to go on stage of her on volition, but had no reason to suspect she would be pinned to the floor and groped. I did shout "get him fucking off you", but obviously not loud enough.

Reviewers, who could have made an impact by registering concern, seemed largely unmoved by the groping. Steve Bennett, founder of the UK's most popular comedy website, Chortle, alluded to what happened, and referred vaguely to Vegas's "rather pervy" come-ons, but says he "wouldn't go as far as condemning him". Bruce Dessau, who, like Bennett, wrote a rather benign review of the gig for the London Evening Standard on Monday, had by Wednesday decided to blog about it, acknowledging that other people were bothered by what had transpired. In the blog he says: "I've often said that one's response to a performance depends on where one is sitting ... But from where I was sitting, my concern was more about his substantial bulk bearing down on her than where his wandering hands were ... Our very own Richard Godwin was at the gig and he was closer to the action than me. He clearly felt Vegas went far too far. Others have also made similar allegations, that Vegas took advantage of an innocent woman."

The Guardian asked Vegas for a response to the reaction to his performance, but he was unavailable for comment. Lee's agent did not return our calls. That is a pity. Friday's gig needs to be openly debated. One comment posted on Chortle, which appears to celebrate the sexual molestation of a woman in public, illustrates why. It reads: "This was the most enjoyable night of comedy I have ever experienced. The discomfort in the predominately middle-class section of the audience I was sitting in was palpable during Vegas's set! During the bit where Vegas was sexually molesting a librarian whilst singing Shakespeare Sister's Stay With Me Baby I overheard a lady behind mutter under her breath 'this is hideous!' The scene was horrifying yet hilarious and Vegas was relentless until Simon Munnery covered the spectacle with his jacket! I will be laughing about this evening for a very long time!".

Former Member · May 2008

Teh_Gerbil wrote: »

Yeah, 'cos Lemmy is always on the front page, and he IS Rock n Roll.

Oh wait, he isn't.

No, you need to be a complete and utter social reject idiot for Media Attention. MANY bands live the Rock n Roll Lifestyle to the full, Motorhead have been doing it forever. You need to be a fuckup (Docherty, that stupid woman who's name I forget who won some award despite being shit.) to get Media attention.

I think you may mean Kate Moss.

I guess maybe drugs and alcohol are cool as long as they're enjoyable, being an addict might be a different matter. I guess I've always had a somewhat warped idea of life!

Former Member · May 2008

He addressed it in an interview with Jonathan Ross tonight and denied the allegations.

Teh_Gerbil · May 2008

WLH wrote: »

I think you may mean Kate Moss.

I guess maybe drugs and alcohol are cool as long as they're enjoyable, being an addict might be a different matter. I guess I've always had a somewhat warped idea of life!

The opposite - Lemmy has been enjoying them his whole life and having fun... the celebrities we see go to rehab 'cos they have a "problem"...

Not Kate Moss, Amy Shithouse. Although Kate Moss is no better... well she is slightly, she's less annoying, but they are both dirt.

Drugs are fun if you aren't an idiot with them. Except Smack or Crack.

Former Member · May 2008

Teh_Gerbil wrote: »

The opposite - Lemmy has been enjoying them his whole life and having fun... the celebrities we see go to rehab 'cos they have a "problem"...

Not Kate Moss, Amy Shithouse. Although Kate Moss is no better... well she is slightly, she's less annoying, but they are both dirt.

Drugs are fun if you aren't an idiot with them. Except Smack or Crack.

Hmm... I guess if they didn't have an addiction they might not be in rehab, but of course celebrity culture is very much about drawing attention to yourself, so it may be more to do with that.

It is possible for people with powerful minds to try heroin without becoming addicted, they are called 'chippers' and tend to confine their use to weekends. I don't know enough about the drug to comment on whether or not it is fun doing that though!

Would have thought generally it's a lot easier to stick with alcohol rather than try illegal drugs though? The unlawfulness does draw some people to them, but doesn't it make it more complicated and less enjoyable? I suppose the tough image that can come with certain drugs does appeal to me sometimes, but actually doing them would be quite depressing and would be disobeying the advice of people who almost certainly know what they're talking about.

And never mind that silly post I did in the Drugs forum, I think the whole idea was that I wanted to find out what people thought.

Former Member · May 2008

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b00b6wnq.shtml?q=jonathan+ross&start=1&scope=iplayersearch&go=Find+Programmes&version_pid=b00b6wkr

Go to 18 minutes, Vegas' account of events.

&quot;Since when is sexual assault funny?&quot;

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"Since when is sexual assault funny?"