Jerry Sadowitz

I saw Jerry Sadowitz in Lancaster yesterday. I don't mind if jokes are not politically correct as jokes are generally offensive to someone. My rule of thumb is don't tell offensive jokes to the person you are offending as they don't tend to get the joke. The audience was mostly male, white and in their fifties and this audience was spared from being the butt of any joke, unless they happened to come from Manchester or Doncaster or Grimsby or Ireland. Even if they did then all they had to do was keep quiet and nobody would know. Women were slightly less fortunate but his jokes could be seen as tongue-in-cheek.

It is also essential for good comedians to make jokes about themselves, and Jerry is certainly able to do this. He calls himself all sorts of things but in the end we were not entirely sure if he meant any of it. He tells us that his esteem was so low that he would rather be a second-rate Bernard Manning than a first-rate Jerry Sadowitz.

Jerry is not a "mock the week" comedian. If Liam Fox is in the news then it doesn't really matter to him as another politician is doing something similar this week. So Jerry directs his humour at other celebrities but is more at the "cutting edge" with his observations. As I see it, whatever these celebrities are alleged to have done, there will be more celebrities doing something similar this week. Jerry's objection to topical humour is not about it being topical but about the subject.

There is some merit in telling us that our sense of humour has been numbed by the media, by other comedians and by political correctness and we should all be prepared to be offended for the sake of making the world a happier place, but I am left wondering if Jerry has been too long at the cutting edge and this has now affected his self-esteem and his popularity. There were times when his rant sounded like an alternative comedian with Tourette's and Jerry spent some time telling us that most comedians are really bad. There are times when offensive language is part of the joke but there were many times last night when the language was just part of a rant.

Change the world