mediawatchwatch.org.uk

Harry Enfield has been in the news twice in the past week. First, came the revelation that TV producers forced him to drop two of his new comedy characters: a sex-crazed Muslim hoodie, and Father Paddy the paedophile Catholic priest.

Enfield said,

I was told, ‘Don’t even go there’.

What a shame!

Now he’s in trouble with the government of the Philippines because of an allegedly racist sketch featuring a Filipina maid. It is fairly obvious that the sketch was actually a spoof of racist attitudes, but racism sniffers are not very good at detecting absurdity or irony.

One of the characters tells his postman that his “chums down the road wanted it see if we could mate their Filippino maid with our Northerner, but he’s not having any of it.”

It’s quite funny:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHEHNu6ZQz8&feature=related[/youtube]
So far there have been no complaints from Northerners.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcrQ1QWYS5w&feature=related[/youtube]
If Enfield apologises for this let’s firebomb his house.*

UPDATE: (8 Oct) The Guardian has an amusing quote from a spokeswoman at the Philippines embassy:

If Tiger Aspect intended the episode to be a joke, we were definitely not amused. Neither did the Filipino community in the UK find it amusing. The UK is a country that is big on human rights issues as well as issues concerning women and racial equality. To stereotype Filipino women … is not only malicious but is also a blatant display of racial prejudice.

In other words: we didn’t get the joke, so you’d better apologise.

But the best is yet to come:

And just for the record, Filipino domestic workers in the UK command one of the highest if not the highest salary among their counterparts. They are highly regarded by their employers because of their work ethics and their trustworthiness.

So Filipino domestic workers have characteristics which make them superior to non-Filipino domestic workers?

[sniff sniff] Can anybody smell racism?

*Joke