Dawn French: I'm glad I'm not starting in comedy today

Comic says she would fear 'haters' challenging edgy material

Dawn French has weighed into the so-called ‘cancel culture’ debate – saying she fears a censorious society could stop comedians experimenting with risqué material.

The comic, who was at the vanguard of alternative comedians who turned over the old order of stand-ups in the early 1980s, said she  is glad she is not starting her career now because of the many ‘haters’ ready to pounce.

And she said she did not know ‘how we go forward from this strange position we’re in’.

In an interview to be broadcast on Times Radio later today, the 63-year-old says: ‘Certainly in the world of stand-up comedy where the edges are is where it’s most interesting

‘I want those edgy people there challenging us all the time and making us laugh. The kind of laughs you have when you think "that’s one of the naughtiest things I’ve ever heard!", or there’s a person inventing a character who is everything awful.

‘But now I just don’t know if you’d ever be able to do that because you’d just have so many haters on your back and I don’t know how we explore it anymore. I’m quite glad to be my age, in a way.’

In another interview with the Telegraph this weekend she admitted to feeling ‘conflicted’ about once enjoying comedies no longer deemed acceptable.

Recalling Fawlty Towers and Little Britain she said: ‘I remember enjoying those shows and not being offended by them, but now it makes you think, "Should I have been?" 

‘I don’t know the answer. Comedy is meant to be on the edge. I’m just glad I’m not a young comedian right now.’

And speaking of the renewed criticism over comedians using blackface she recalled telling double-act partner  Jennifer Saunders: ‘We are lucky we didn’t do that.’ 

‘And her response was, "But we would not have done that." And she’s right. I played Samuel L Jackson and Missy Elliott and neither of us even thought to put on a black face. We were awake as opposed to "woke".’

Her new novel  Because of You contains black and white characters, and she said she believed she should be able to write black characters, just as a black writer should be able to write white ones.

• French’s will be on Mariella Frostrup’s Times Radio show from  1pm today.

Published: 12 Oct 2020

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