Up before the taste and decency watchdogs this week is Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles for the following comments about his appearance on the BBC genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? :
“I went off to Ireland and other places to film and unlike a lot of the Who Do You Think You Are? shows I didn’t go to Auschwitz. Pretty much everyone goes there whether or not they’re Jewish. They just seem to pass through there on their way to Florida.”
Although I don’t listen to his show I do think Moyles is a talented broadcaster and I do find him funny.
The issue with this new “outcry” is that it represents the worst kind of knee-jerk reaction. The joke in no way makes light of the suffering at Auschwitz, it is a joke about our cultural preoccupation with it. This is a crucial distinction when it comes to near-the-knuckle comedy like this.
Had Moyles made fun of the Holocaust then he would deserve all the censure he is getting but he didn’t. It is not a joke at the expense of Holocaust victims or their families, it is a joke at the expense of tv executives who too often use the Holocaust as an easy way to generate sentimental television.
It is in the same spirit as the Extras episode in which Kate Winslet admits that she is doing a Holocaust film in order to win an Oscar.
Those who will now round on Moyles as the latest evidence of the BBC’s moral collapse should stop and think about the comments which have been made, rather than use the very mention of the Holocaust in a comedic context as a lazy excuse to saddle up their high horses.
