A few words on Danny Baker

A few words on Danny Baker, prompted by coverage of ‘that tweet’ in the Guardian.

Gaby Hinsliff’s article, ‘Sorry, Danny Baker — sometimes comedy is just off limits’, makes a very reasonable argument: that even if you believe Danny Baker’s explanation for that tweet, it was still right to sack him — because it appeared racist to people, and therefore sacking him sent a much needed message.

I think I can agree with that argument. (Although I don’t agree it should be the end of his career. Also: he should not have been summarily sacked. He should have been suspended, investigated, and given a proper hearing.) All the same, I found myself disliking this column immensely.

In part it’s its tone. The conclusion in particular is filled with just the kind of pomposity that Danny Baker himself loves to lampoon:

It’s about a presenter, paid by the taxpayer to be the face of a national institution, being held to admittedly tougher standards than ordinary mortals precisely because there can be graver consequences when someone in his very public position gets it wrong. And that’s no laughing matter.

In part, it’s its rather manipulative argument. It says a) even if you accept the premise of the joke was not racist, it still can’t be defended because b) it wasn’t funny, and the reason for that was because c) this royal baby represents a hopeful story of racial harmony.

Or in other words, even if this joke wasn’t racist, it still kinda was, because any jokes about this baby are necessarily contrary to any decent person’s hopes for a just society.

In this it was like another Guardian article on the matter, which again said that even if you accept his defence that his gag wasn’t racist, then ‘even his most adoring listeners will surely begin to question whether his brand of humour has passed its sell-by date’.

These are odd arguments. If he was being racist, then the gag (and he himself) is irredeemable. If not, then there’s no reason to suggest that his entire approach to humour (and thus career) is on its own terms defunct.

But most of all, what I disliked about Gaby Hinsliff’s column was the way it brought that UKIPer who made the most appalling rape ‘joke’ into this, as well as the racist abuse of black footballers. By placing these scumbags adjacent to Danny Baker, it was framing him in the same terms.

I can understand how this column was written that way. These are the ready materials for use. They go together. It works as a column. And it makes a good point, a morally-justified point. All the same, it’s uncaringly framing him as the worst kind of scumbag. He’s just column-fodder, to be forgotten by the time the next column is to be written. (Or to be readily available as a one-dimensional cautionary tale character, to be invoked as shorthand for ‘accidental racism’, or the price celebrities must pay for their social media indiscretions, whenever a column on such a topic needs to be filed.)

I’m upset for him on this score. Not least because if I know anything about him, he’d be the first to condemn such scumbags as scumbags. It’s his own fault, and he acknowledges that. And it’s still minor compared to being on the receiving end of that kind of vile racial or misogynistic prejudice. But, still. It’s saddening.

Because Danny Baker and I go back a long way. I mean, not literally. I don’t know him. But I must have spent thousands of hours in his company.

This started way back on the Six O’Clock Show on LWT — which I remember with fondness, as it felt like the start of the weekend. Then I remember listening to his breakfast show on Radio 5, back in its very earliest days in the early 90s, before they’d worked out what to do with that station. His show was like an island in a sea of kids’ programmes. He used to hand over at 9am to Christopher Lillicrap, I seem to remember.

And I’ve listened to him since as he’s pinballed between Radio 1, Radio 5, GLR, Virgin, whatever they turned GLR into, Radio 5 again, and other points in between. Hell, I even watched his chat show. And in all these years I’ve never heard a thing to suggest there’s a racist bone in his body.

I have heard him explore a deep, eccentric, throwback interest in music hall, vaudeville, carnival, fairground, circus, camp, razzmatazz, Disney, and big dumb entertainment. He wears a fez of an evening.

I can believe that he used a picture of chimp dressed up as a little prince innocently. It’s the kind of thing that would have tickled him.

Of course, the vast majority of people, just hearing about this picture, wouldn’t begin to see that. So that even where columnists have repeated his defence, that he was using it innocently to poke some fun at the royals, they’ve dismissed it. How could he not understand the racist connotations of posting a picture of a chimp in this context? His defence must therefore be totally unconvincing. At best he’s being unconsciously racist; but racist nonetheless.

His reply to all this is that of course he recognises the racist connotations of such an image. But that he wasn’t even thinking about race when he posted the picture. And that’s how come he could post it. Because he was using it innocently, to make a very different point. And it wouldn’t cross his mind to make a crude, racist point, because he’s not a crude racist. Once it was pointed out to him how it looked, then of course he saw it and of course he was mortified.

So I believe him. And I think it was right that he was sacked (though not in that way), precisely because most people won’t understand this defence, and thus it does send an important and warranted message. But I also very much hope to be listening to him again, on whichever radio station it will be, before very long.