It may well be most prudent for the thinking aspie not to go to any Fringe comedies at all. But a few thoughtful ones on worthwhile subjects do happen. It's so chancy, when you see one billed on a subject worth bothering with, whether the billing is true or whether it's just an attention grabbing device for just another rough biting jerk who wants to spend an hour talking about social humiliations and child maltreatment.
Kevin Precious is a particularly bad case of the latter. Revile and avoid his show. It included a joke about having cancer. He is the next show on straight after our annual aspie visitor Paul Wady's show at the same venue.
Precious is a humanist who used to have to schoolteach religious studies. That sounds of interest to anyone anti-school, and the show's billing sets up a prospect of hearing a lot about intellectual conflict with a system.
No that's not what you get at all, He did not suffer any conflict, he was allowed to teach study of religions witbout asserting that any one is right and to tell the parents he had no belief - and that's about all his material on it, 5 minutes' worth. There is no critique of school at al, despite lots of harsh jokes at its miseries, including against the character of PE teachers yet not making the obvious deduction that there should not be any PE. He is a offputtingly blunt voiced earthy macho type, that's visibly why he has no spirituality!
Most of the show is about Jimmy Savile and the same worn out offensiveness that all the satirical comedians have followed in the time of high child abuse awareness - of making lots of purportedly angry political satire about it, that turns THE ABUSE ITSELF into a joke, and an instant audience laugh trigger.
Why is this not deemed an offence and just as unacceptable to the victims as the crime itself?! References that would not be accepted in more serious talking get actively flaunted in comedy to make the comedian cool, and thid has gone on for years endlessly. It's because folks fear sounding uncool if they criticise comedy - the same reason as why no campaigns or child protectors who can do anything against Blackadder's incitement of and siding with bullying, have ever wanted to, in 32 years since that episode was made. But when you say that about Blackadder, serious minded folks get the point perfectly - it works liks the Emperor's New Clothes, just need to say the visible truth that is not getting said.
So it's the same for stand-up and satirical comedy that goes on at great length and detail about child sbuse. It is another offensive exploitation of the affected folks, an exploitation of them, another act of not caring in a socially including way, a compounding of the actual abuse. It merits anger and moral reaction.
Maurice Frank
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