Islamophobia Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

-This is clearly the weakest of the four series that you've done.

-Yeah.

Is that deliberate?

This programme contains adult humour and very strong language.

Like most reasonable people, I hate all Muslims,

except the ones I've met, who seem fine.

Now, we all know... Don't we? ..that Islamic State

does not represent Islam, although inconveniently,

it does appear to have been named after it.

So, if the military campaign fails, perhaps we can have them dealt with

by the Advertising Standards Authority...

..in the strongest terms.

Religious people generally are sort of tarnished by association

with extremism, so it is nice when you see a religious person

doing something normal, like when that Muslim woman

won the Bake Off competition on the BBC.

Of course, the Daily Mail went mad.

They said it was political correctness gone mad,

they said in the Daily Mail.

And they said perhaps one of the other contestants would have won

if they'd baked a chocolate mosque.

That's what they said in the Daily Mail.

Genuinely. But...

..you can't just win Bake Off by baking a politically-correct cake.

I know this because I sent Mary Berry

a fudge abortion clinic...

LAUGHTER

..with a protective ring of sponge-finger feminists...

..and all I got was a warning from the police.

A Muslim baking a cake?

It's political correctness gone mad.

What next? Windsurfing Sikhs?

Transsexuals with allotments?

A Jew on a motorbike?

I thought maybe they'd got a point, all these newspaper columnists

scrawling away in crayon. Maybe it is time...

Maybe it's time for people like me on the Loony Left,

terrorist sympathisers,

maybe it's time for us to try and be more Islamophobic,

try some of the Islamophobia, get the Daily Mail off my back,

create the illusion of balance, work the Islamophobic market.

That's a growing market, isn't it? The Islamophobic market.

Everyone's Islamophobic now, aren't they?

Old Donald Trump in that America, he's Islamophobic, isn't he?

And his name sounds like the sort of name Walt Disney would've made up

if he'd been asked to invent a fart that could speak.

LAUGHTER

Old Jim Davidson the comedian, he's Islamophobic, isn't he?

Probably. I don't know, I expect so. He looks like he would be.

LAUGHTER

You know, shouldn't generalise about people but...

He had a comeback show on the road, Jim Davidson.

It was called I Didn't Even Rape Anyone.

You're not supposed to, are you?

You know, you don't make a big song and dance about not doing it.

He's Islamophobic, I expect.

Even a lot of Muslims aren't that keen now, are they?

What about their schools in Birmingham?

It's outrageous, isn't it?

No child should have to go to school in Birmingham.

I can do jokes, you see, I'm just not...

It's not something that's of interest to me.

So, I thought I'd do some of that, the Islamophobia.

But it's all very well, isn't it? Being ironically Islamophobic

in a working men's club full of Guardian readers.

The vegetarian restaurants of Hackney are quiet tonight.

The halloumi sleeps safely... LAUGHTER

..ungrilled in its little vacuumy nest.

It's all right, isn't it, being Islamophobic to you,

but how to get the Islamophobia out into the wider world,

where all the idiots are,

to really disrupt the fabric of a functioning society?

Well, I thought, "What kind of stand-up do people like?"

It isn't this, is it? This is very niche, what I do.

Out there in TV land, there's huge pockets of resistance.

But...

So, what kind of stand-up do people like? And it's observational comedy,

that's the most popular form of stand-up.

If you don't know what that is, observational comedy,

it's ITV1, BBC1, sort of - "Oh, have you seen this?" "Yes" -

sort of stuff. LAUGHTER

Or...

"Do you do this? I do." "Yes."

Or, "Do you remember this?"

AGGRESSIVELY: "Yes! Yes! For fuck sake! Yes!"

See them out there?

They're going, "Oh, now it's picking up."

You remember things, don't you? Do you remember things?

And you did something, didn't you, once?

You just stay at home now, though, don't you? Watching telly.

So, I thought I'd do that...

..observational comedy, cos people like that...

AGGRESSIVELY: Don't you?

..but of a specifically anti-Islamic flavour.

Try and do some Islamophobic observational comedy.

So, here we are for the first time,

some anti-Islamic observational comedy.

HE SIGHS

Oh, have you...? Oh.

Have you seen these Muslims they have now?

Nah, it's not enough, is it? LAUGHTER

I tell you what, it's harder than it looks, the observational comedy.

It's not enough, just observing something,

you've got to have some kind of angle as well.

I thought, "How am I going to get

"28 minutes anti-Islamic observational comedy together?"

Daily Mail off back, illusion of balance, Islamophobic market.

And then as luck would have it, one Saturday morning,

I was on the 149 bus in East London, round here where I live.

I was travelling up from Liverpool Street station

to Stamford Hill. And on the bus, I saw,

on the only empty seat on the bus,

an abandoned copy of the Jehovah's Witnesses magazine

Watchtower, right?

Now, I love the Jehovah's Witnesses, not least of all

because they have predicted the end of the world, wrongly,

five times now... LAUGHTER

..and they don't seem to feel this compromises them in any way.

"That's right, Stew, have a go at the Jehovah's Witnesses, mate,

"for not being able to predict the future. Well done."

This is you, this is what you think, isn't it?

Back at home with your inner Sun editorial ticking away.

"Have a go at them!

"How come none of you politically correct, 1980s,

"gay, Marxist comedians

"never have a go at the fucking Muslims, do you?

"When you going to stick it to the Islams? Come on!

"Get the Muslims, you fucking gay cunt!"

Who are you?

See, the Islamophobia out there,

it's like a furnace of hate.

"Get them! Get the fucking... Get them now!

"One in five Muslims thinks that Morecambe and Wise

"were better when they went to ITV." LAUGHTER

This is you, this is what you think.

"One in five Muslims thinks Paul McGann

"was an acceptable Doctor Who."

That's what you think. It's what they think.

"One in five Muslims has some sympathy

"with David Bowie's late-'90s drum and bass period."

LAUGHTER It's what you...

"Get the fucking... Get them now!"

All right, calm down.

I can't just come out here and start laying into Islam out of nowhere,

can I?

No. I've got to stick it to all the stupid, weak religions

first of all and then use their shattered bones

as a kind of makeshift rope ladder to climb up and urinate

through the letterbox of heaven.

"Get them now! Get them, you...!"

All right.

I assure you...

..within three minutes' time, on this television programme,

on this stage, a Muslim will have been lampooned.

"Get them!"

So...

If it was up to me, this wouldn't be on television.

Anyone can watch it, you know that?

So, I was on the 149 bus,

there's a Jehovah's Witness magazine, Watchtower, on the seat.

And then around Dalston Junction, just over that way,

a Muslim woman gets on the bus, walks up the aisle,

sees the Jehovah's Witness magazine on the seat and sits on it, right?

And I was hoping she would, to be honest, cos I thought,

"Oh, good, I've observed that."

LAUGHTER

LAUGHTER CONTINUES

I don't know if she knew what it was. I don't know if she knew it was

a holy Jehovah's Witness magazine or not.

I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt even though,

if a Jehovah's Witness had sat on a copy of the Koran,

I'm sure we'd never hear the end of it.

LAUGHTER

Except... So, I thought, it doesn't matter, does it, really?

Except that then while sitting on the Jehovah's Witness magazine,

the Muslim woman got a copy of the Koran out of her bag,

which she started to read, as if to say,

"I read the Koran with my eyes,

"but I read your infidel Jehovah's Witness magazine..."

You see, that's how... Did you come in fast there?

That's how that joke works, see? You crash it halfway through.

You crash the joke.

Did you laugh? Did you anticipate it at home?

No, cos you're not listening properly, are you?

There's two jokes then.

There's the joke itself and there's a second joke, isn't there?

Where the audience go, "Oh, how amusing.

"Any blasphemous content was merely only subconsciously articulated

"by us."

Two laughs here in the room.

You at home are just going, "Oh, that sentence hasn't finished."

"I paid my licence fee to hear entire sentences.

"I agree with John Whittingdale, the BBC's rubbish.

"There aren't even full sentences on it."

So, I...

Rupert Murdoch would have full sentences, wouldn't he?

So...

Isn't this an interesting thing? I assumed she was reading a Koran.

I don't actually know, do I? It could have been anything.

And here's an interesting thing, I like to think of myself as

a politically-correct liberal, right?

But I've realised, writing this bit, that I carry around

all sorts of unconscious prejudices about all sorts of people.

And one of them is that if I see a Muslim person reading anything

in public, I always assume it's the Koran.

And I think, "Oh, reading the Koran again, are you?

"You religious maniac.

"Why don't you try and assimilate into our society

"by entering a cake-making competition?"

LAUGHTER

"But you better not win."

But...

But I don't know that she was reading the Koran, do I?

She could have been reading anything, that woman, couldn't she?

She could have been reading an Arabic edition of

Fifty Shades Of Grey for all I know.

Except from what I understand, in Islam,

there aren't really any shades of grey.

LAUGHTER

Yeah, all sorts of responses in the room, aren't there?

Horrible cackling of Mock The Week viewers over there.

"Ha-ha! Get them!" And then...

..over here, the low, confused mumbling of the key audience,

the liberal intelligentsia there, going,

"Ooh...not sure about that joke.

"It's a very complex issue."

"I can see what he's trying to do, but it's very complex.

"Can it be boiled down to a simple feedline/punchline? I don't know."

And that is the key audience for me.

They will be with me long after you people who got in free

have drifted away like the chaff you are.

That's my dream - Wembley Stadium, 16,000 seats.

Just them, the liberal intelligentsia,

no laughs all night...

LAUGHTER

..just people going, "Well, it's very complex because

"there's many different schools of thought within Islam,

"so it's not really, you can't really make a generali..."

But you... But...

You can all laugh at that joke, right?

I've put all the scaffolding in place that everyone needs

to be allowed to laugh at it.

I came over here, didn't I? And I said,

"I am a politically correct liberal." I did that.

Then I came here and I said,

"But I carry around these unconscious prejudices." Did that.

Then I came over here, didn't I?

And I made an arguably reactionary joke about Islam

but from a position of relative security,

having built the apology back into the setup of the joke

here and here, right? LAUGHTER

And that's what a lot of these young comics, they encourage now.

I understand you can do the offensive joke,

but you have to do the apology first.

You do the apology first,

not two weeks later on Newsnight in your best polo-neck jumper.

LAUGHTER

Dapper Laughs, victim of a middle-class conspiracy or not,

what kind of person gets dropped by ITV2?

You know?

It's like being barred from a pub that's already on fire.

And you can laugh at that joke if you're a Muslim.

I hope you are and I hope you did. Cos if you're a Muslim,

you can't go, "I am a Muslim and I will not laugh at a joke

"that suggests there's no room for nuance within Islam,"

cos that's what the joke's about. And then it's on you, so ha!

So everyone has to laugh. You have to laugh at everything now.

Are you aware of that? You have to laugh at everything -

whether you find it funny, whether you understand it,

whether you only grasp at its historical or cultural context.

You have to laugh at everything, otherwise you've given in to terror.

You have to laugh at everything now - dog shit, Adam Sandler,

Comedy Central... You've got to laugh at everything.

Cos if you don't, the terrorists have won.

You've got to laugh at everything.

You've got to laugh at this. You've got to laugh at this all the time.

So, I was on the 149 bus...

"Get them now! Get them!"

This leads into it, calm down.

So, I was on the 149 bus,

there's a...

They're awful, aren't they? The people at home.

I...

So, I was on the 149 bus,

there's a Muslim woman sitting on a Jehovah's Witness magazine,

reading the Koran. I thought, "Brilliant, this is all I need

"to make a 28-minute Islamophobic observational comedy routine."

There was one other thing I wanted to happen,

I was hoping some other religious group would get on the bus,

sort of interact with the woman, maybe something funny would happen

with the Jehovah's Witness magazine

and I could sort of write something at the end going,

"Blah, blah, blah. While I remain suspicious of religious privilege,

"I hope we can all get on in a diverse society."

But it didn't really happen. I sat on the bus for about five hours,

it didn't really happen. LAUGHTER

It nearly happened.

Around Ridley Road Market, loads of Quakers got on the bus,

about 20 Quakers. LAUGHTER

OK, you laugh cos you've come...

If you live round here, right, we see Quakers all the time.

There's a Quaker chapel on the green here and there's a Quaker cemetery

up Bouverie Road, so it's not unusual to see Quakers round N16.

Anyway, all these Quakers got on the bus with porridge all down them...

LAUGHTER

You know, smearing all the chocolate,

all the chocolate fingerprints all down the fucking...

All porridge in the aisle where people have to...

Do you like Quakers? Do you like them?

You know, I...

Fine, I've had enough of them. I have.

Do you know what, I surprise myself cos I've got friends

of all different religions and politics and I normally...

You know, we find common ground, but the Quakers, I just...

I hate them, I absolutely hate Quakers.

Well, you laugh, but you don't have to live where they are, do you?

You don't have to live amongst them, right?

Well, it's all very well, but every day, where I live,

there is some problem caused by the Quaker community.

Like last Sunday morning, about six o'clock in the morning,

one of the kids got me up and they went,

"Ooh, can we have porridge for breakfast?"

So I went all the way down to the corner shop in Dalston.

I said to the bloke, "Have you not got any porridge?"

He goes, "No, Quakers have been in."

LAUGHTER

He goes, "Look at this." And there's all dry porridge flakes

all on the floor

with little buckled-shoe footprints in them.

Two adult Quakers and a kid one.

He says, "They come in, got all the porridge boxes,

"ripped off the bloke's face..."

Why? Cos he looks like them? It's idiotic.

And then just thrown porridge all up in the air,

all over their hats and everything.

And then just... It's just idiot...

And you know what, he said,

"No-one will do anything because of political correctness."

You know, it's every day.

Like last Friday night, about half ten,

I was watching telly, I said, "I wish I had some chocolate now."

So, I went down the off-licence on Green Lanes, 24 off-licence,

I said, "Have you not got any chocolate?"

He goes, "No, Quakers have been in."

He goes, "Look at this," and he plays back the CCTV footage.

It's unbelievable, about 70 Quakers have come in

on skateboards and mobility scooters,

pogo sticks, space hoppers and those things what you stand on, on them.

Vermin, aren't they?

And then they've run all round,

they've got all the chocolate in the shop. Not even really eaten it,

just unwrapped it and then licked it and rubbed it,

put it down themselves, then just thrown it on the floor.

Idiotic, isn't it? Unbelievable.

Every day there's some problem.

Like, last Tuesday night about half six,

like any normal person, I suddenly thought,

"I wish I had a pair of over-the-knee white tights,

"some shoes with really shiny buckles,

"a massive hat like that, and a ruff,

"and a waistcoat and some tight little breeches."

So I went all the way down to the Quaker clothes shop

and I said to the bloke, "Have you not got any Quaker clothes?"

He goes, "No, Quakers have been in."

I thought, "Fair enough, it's their shop, isn't it?"

IN CHILD-LIKE VOICE: "They can go in their own shops,

"I think."

So... LAUGHTER

Anyway, all these Quakers got on the bus, and I thought...

Brilliant, one of the Quakers is going to want to sit down.

He's going to come up the aisle and the Muslim woman

is going to move over and the Quaker will see that the Muslim

was sitting on a Jehovah's Witness magazine and he'll go,

"Eee-gadzooks," or whatever shit they say

in their stupid cockroach language.

But the problem was...

..all the Quakers just stayed hanging around the middle of the bus

where all the prams and that are.

And that's the problem with these religious groups, I think,

they won't integrate, will they? You know?

Is it too much to expect the Quakers to do, say and think

everything I think they should? Apparently so.

That's the key line for this,

that's the key line for this routine,

so don't write in cos that justifies it.

I haven't got the 28-minute anti-Islamic

observational comedy routine,

I've got three anti-Islamic one-liners that I've written.

And when I'm done with them, I'm going to sell them on

to Roy Chubby Brown. And...

it does work better if I do them in his voice.

So, here we are, three anti-Islamic one-liners.

IMITATES ROY CHUBBY BROWN: Hey, do you know...

LAUGHTER

..one in two kids

born in Britain today is called Mohammed...

..and that...and that, that's just the girls.

LAUGHTER

I think so anyway, I haven't...

..I haven't got the exact figures.

Are they even available? I don't know.

They're not available, are they?

Course, one of the problems with this is the name Mohammed,

you can spell that four or five different ways,

so it's very difficult to harvest accurate data.

LAUGHTER

I've got another one for you now. Hey, do you know,

one in two radical Islamists in Britain today is a...

I've done no research. LAUGHTER

I've done no fucking research.

I don't have to, I'll tell you why.

Cos if you film your own DVDs

and direct market them to bins in garage forecourts...

..you don't have to run owt by legal, see?

No, cos the legal restrictions for direct market content

is far more lax than what there is for broadcast media, see.

So, I'm not obliged to make sure that there's any kind

of a factual relationship between the set-up of a joke

and the conclusion drawn from the often folkloric punchline.

So, I'm able to give the impression of being

a politically incorrect outlaw,

whereas the truth is I merely distribute my product

to a far-less-tightly-regulated marketplace.

Hey, look at that, look at that.

I tell you what,

they love that broadcasting law stuff...

..down here in metrosexual London.

They fucking love the broadcasting law.

You try and do that at Burnley Mechanicals,

they'll fucking crucify you.

And another aspect of broadcasting law...

"Fucking shut up, Chubby, there's no interest in any of that."

So, I've got another one. They will, they'll...

I see you got the bloke that did it last time.

So, I've got another one for you now.

Hey, do you know, I don't really speak like this, do I?

It's a sort of generic voice.

I'd be offended if it was supposed to be an impression of me.

So, I've got another one for you.

Where's this actually even from? I don't know.

The Clangers or something.

I've got another one for you now.

Hey, do you know, LAUGHTER

one in two people in Britain today

claiming to be a spokesperson

for the entire British Muslim community

is in fact the unelected leader of a non-democratic,

presidential think group and political lobbying organisation...

..giving political influence and media profile

far in excess of its membership numbers or demographic reach

as a result of a hastily-implemented,

but ultimately, to be honest, benign...

LAUGHTER

..early 1990s local government community

bridge-building initiative.

HE RESUMES NORMAL VOICE Yeah, some laughs,

a bit of applause.

All you lot at home going, "What the fuck was that supposed to be?"

I'll tell you what that was,

that's the best joke about Islam in Britain anyone's ever done.

It's even-handed, it's informed...

It's not funny, no. It's not funny, admittedly.

But it's what you say you want, isn't it? You go...

ANGRILY: "Do stuff about Islam. Come on!"

I just did. "Not like that, Stew."

"Not where they have to know anything about it."

TENSE MUSIC

HE MOUTHS SILENTLY

CYMBALS CHIME

TENSE MUSIC BUILDS TO CRESCENDO

RHYTHMIC RUSTLING

HAUNTING DISTANT CRY

TENSE MUSIC FADES

SINISTER MUSIC

It feels like a good idea that we should really have a look

and see what's gone so badly wrong.