Jerry canned is bad, mad & Sad

STICKS and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

Clearly a saying the head of the Pleasance theatre at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has not taken on board.

Last week the venue cancelled the famously shocking comic Jerry Sadowitz for being, well, shocking!

They reported an “unprecedented” number of complaints after a “large number of people” walked out of a show.

Did any of these people know who they were seeing? The title – Jerry Sadowitz: Not For Anyone – would have been a clue.

And the audience was warned: “This show contains strong language and themes some may find distressing.”

Way before Chris Rock was slapped by Will Smith over a joke, Sadowitz was knocked out cold in Canada for calling his audience “moosef***ers.”

Yet 300 people who had bought tickets the following night missed out because the gig was abandoned. Hilariously, the theatre’s director Anthony Alderson explained: “The Pleasance is a venue that champions freedom of speech and we do not censor comedians’ material.”

He then cut Jerry’s next show, thereby censoring him and blocking his freedom of speech.

It’s said Jerry may have offended people because he got his penis out on stage. That’s nothing new.

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe was praised for getting his wang out for a play called Equus. And there are two large d**ks on stage every time Right Said Fred play live.

Some of his material has been described as “extreme in its racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny”.

Jerry responded by saying people had not listened properly and “in real life, I really don’t want to upset anyone”.

I once went to a Roy Chubby Brown gig and his casual racism shocked me.

I won’t be going back. But many will. And that’s the point.

If people are willing to pay to see these acts, they should get to perform.

It’s not up to self-righteous venue directors to decide what is funny and what is not. And it’s not for comedians to fix society’s problems – they’re there to make people laugh.

Thanks to the ban, more people than ever will want to catch a Sadowitz show. Although, as he says himself, you probably

shouldn’t bother.