From BBC News:
A comedian who joked about the Liverpool parade crash has had an upcoming show cancelled following a social media backlash.
Andrew Lawrence said he would “drive through crowds of people” to get out of the city, in a post that has prompted more than 7,000 responses on X.
At least 65 people were injured in Monday’s incident, and Caddies in Southend has cancelled Lawrence’s upcoming gig, saying it did not “condone or support” the comment.
The 37-year-old responded he was disappointed the venue had “lost their courage after being bombarded with abuse and threats of violence from online trolls”.
A comedian saying something socially transgressive for a laugh is hardly a new phenomenon, but as a form of clowning it can fall flat: back in 2004 Billy Connelly was heckled after reportedly saying at a gig that he wished that jihadists who were threatening to execute the British hostage Ken Bigley in Baghdad should “get on with it” – the incident was reported in the Sun under the headline “The Sick Yin”.
The difference, though, was that nobody seriously thought that Connelly actually meant it; and although his quip caused offence and perhaps also distress, he wasn’t commenting about Bigley personally. Lawrence, in contrast, took direct aim at the affected community with an expression of contempt; and given his association with the populist right – in 2014 he was praised by Nigel Farage after denouncing what he called the “moronic, liberal back-slapping” of comedians who make it onto the BBC – it is reasonable to interpret his post not as transgressive clowning for its own sake but as an instance of ideologically driven performative callousness. It is worth noting that he did not post his joke until after it had been confirmed by the police that the suspect was a “white British man” (an annoucement to which Lawrence objected), meaning that the incident could not be weaponised by the movement.
Adding to the impression is his bullish follow-up statement, in which he referred to the incident as a “clown show of Scouse retards”. This ugly term “retard”, either as a noun or in its adjectival form, has recently become something of a populist-right shibboleth; last month, Joe Rogan declared in conversation with Douglas Murray that “the word retarded is back and it’s one of the great culture victories”.
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