SK: Piers, thanks for writing your paper. Let's start with you giving us a quick summary of your ideas about comedy and free speech, please.

PB: My general view about free speech and open discussion is that they are tremendously important in all kinds of areas such as politics, journalism, education, science, and art. For example, a lack of free discussion can have disastrous effects on the pursuit of knowledge. We face serious threats to these values, coming from various political directions. However, almost everyone in this debate accepts that there are legitimate limits to free expression, summed up in Mill's ‘harm principle’. But within that framework there is plenty of room for disagreement about when and why expression should be coercively limited. Comedy and art in general raise questions of their own, since their value cannot always be defended in terms of knowledge acquisition, unlike in science. Censorship of comedy can rarely, if ever, be justified on grounds of offensiveness, but like any other expression, it can be defended, in principle at least, on the grounds of being likely to cause serious harm.

The question of offensiveness leads to another point, which is that comedy, like much else, can be morally objectionable for various reasons, including that it is grossly offensive. But you can disapprove of a show without thinking that people who want to watch it should be prevented from doing so. We should also remember that authoritarians and the powerful have a great fear of being mocked and hence harbour a special enthusiasm for censorship.

SK: Thanks Piers. So, there is plenty going on in your paper. Here are some issues that come to my mind. First, there is the old concern about free speech and about where to draw the line, where to distinguish between the acceptable forms of speech (including the offensive) and the unacceptable forms of speech (including the harmful). This can be discussed in relation to comedy, as you do, Piers. A second and related issue that comes to mind concerns the modern context that we are in. Previously, people might have seen the harmful form of speech as being constituted wholly or mainly as speech that incites violence, where this was likely to imply physical violence. At present there is more awareness that words themselves can harm psychologically and affect people's mental health. Often they do so directly or through some indirect ‘drip-drip-drip’ feed of affecting people's views of others in subtle ways. I am wondering in this modern context whether a discussion of comedy adds anything to the mix? Does the seduction and power that comes with comedy, or with particularly influential comedians, mean that performers are in a particular sort of position to be scrutinized? Is comedy on the frontline of the free speech debates because of its popularity?

Then there's a third issue that Piers doesn't mention but which occurs to me, speaking about ‘the modern age’. So, when a comedian is doing a set they are often performing for a particular length of time or the overall show constitutes a particular setting, a certain performance. There is a context to what they say and perform throughout. But with current social media a full set can be recorded and then ‘clipped’ by someone else so that, say, just two or three minutes is taken from the show and then displayed on a social media platform, with the possibility of it going viral. In some of these examples, the comedian could be taken as saying something very offensive or even harmful that, in the wider performance context, can be seen differently and less negatively. So, in this type of example, where does the moral responsibility lie for certain sorts of speech being aired? Is it simply the person clipping the set? Given that performers know that this sort of thing happens, do they have a certain and additional responsibility for things they say and for things being misconstrued in this manner? They might not know exactly how someone will clip what they do, but they know it could and that it might well happen. So, do they have to plan each five-minute part carefully so they don't lose the wider context within the smaller piece?

I'm sure we will cover all three issues and more. I'm interested mainly if the current climate has changed how performers operate, Alex and Dave, and how your experiences help inform these and other questions.

AF: Thanks. In relation to that third issue you raise, Simon, and in relation to the general issues Piers raises, I think there are two types or streams of pressure on performers. These pressures are coming from society in total or at least from certain sections of society. First, I think it's fair to say that increasingly there are restrictions and expectations on what a performer should say in a live venue in front of a live audience: certainly in terms of who you can and cannot offend, and also in terms of the fact that more content and views are being policed. But, second, whilst that first type of pressure is present in the social media space, there is also a contrary pressure – particularly online – to be more shocking to get more clicks or views. Perhaps it has something to do with the ease of access and the fact that so much is readily available online at the touch of a button. It is also definitely true that in order to stand out you need to be extreme, you need to ‘feed the algorithm’. That's true of politics as well, of course. And so, because we have these two pressures pulling us in opposite directions, there is lots of debate right now as people are trying to work out where the lines are between the acceptable and the unacceptable, and I suppose what currently constitutes offence and harm.

In relation to that, here's one of my favourite current anecdotes. There was a comedian recently who asked a member of the audience what they did for a job and the audience member replied, ‘You can't do that. That's what Paul Smith does.’ The comedian was understandably taken aback. This is a standard move that many comedians do and have done for generations. The audience member was referring to Paul Smith who appears a lot at the Hot Water comedy club and who has many clips on social media with a very large following. If you are outside the comedy circuit and are exposed only to clips, by and large, then this would be an understandable thing to say. But it is clearly also a silly thing to say, and instructive for all that.

So, I suppose what we can draw from this anecdote in relation to the issues Piers raises is whether we restrict ourselves to certain vehicles for comedy when we are thinking about free speech, or whether we are thinking about many vehicles. Further, this anecdote can serve as an invitation. Are we considering the interesting clashes and tensions there might be when different vehicles and audiences meet?

SK: Any thoughts Dave? You work between different media, don't you? Then we can turn to Piers.

DC: Yes, I perform across various media and live. I agree with everything Alex has just pointed out. Here is one point I'd add. I think online content seems to have the potential to be so provocative because you take away some of the consequences when you're not in the same room as people. There is feeling you can get away with more. You might lose people in the physical room whereas online if you lose people, then some performers can brush that aside more easily. (I'm not saying all people can. Sometimes you can say outrageous things online that people criticize and that itself might affect people just as much as a physical criticism or confrontation after a gig.)

PB: The problems created by editing recordings of live performances for online consumption are interesting. My first reaction is that there is a danger of creating tame, bland material because of this possibility. That would often be undesirable. It is an occupational hazard that short clips will be put online, and provided the clips are unlikely to be seriously harmful in the ways discussed, that should often be accepted. They might also be the funniest parts of the performance. Perhaps performers should work it into their routine, warning the live audience that nothing particularly funny will be said until 11 mins 32 secs and that if they are watching online, they should skip to that bit unless some idiot editor has taken it out.

On the idea that a certain part of the routine can be grasped only contextually, we need to be clear about when this is, and isn't true. Consider live interviews with politicians, followed by edited highlights. A politician might waffle copiously until they come to the point, and the news editor selects for later transmission only the ten seconds when they finally do so. If the waffle was intended to take away the impact of the point, the editor is justified in cutting it out to make the point clear. The politician would then worry that they were presented in a clearer light than they wanted to be. Similarly, it might be that an edited highlight of a comedy show reveals the real spirit of the show. On the other hand, out-of-context segments can mislead the audience, even if the audience should know better. Audiences will project their own presuppositions onto the performer. There can be harmful or needlessly upsetting content, and I suppose performers simply must make a judgement and balance that fact against both the danger of blandness and – to echo Alex's point – going over the top.

There is another point about the difference between live and online viewing, and here an analogy with teaching helps. During the Covid-19 lockdowns we got used to teaching on Zoom. I was thrown into panic by this until I worked out what Zoom was and how to operate it. The result was that while effective teaching was possible online, much was missed. Nuances can be effectively conveyed face-to-face that are hard to convey via a screen. This reinforces the point Dave makes about the difference between live and online viewing, except that I also think that a kind of ‘bonding’ in physical space, with physical gestures and personally directed facial expressions, can sometimes make the face-to-face encounter more tentative and conciliatory.

As to the question of responsibility: generally speaking, responsibility for results rests with anyone who willingly contributes to results that they know might come about. So, I suppose that both performers and editors share responsibility for the final edited result.

SK: That's great, thanks Piers. So, let's nail this issue, then, carrying on some of these thoughts. A lot of the comedy and free speech issues have to do with boundaries and lines. When we consider a type of speech or content that is edgy, it's on the cusp between offence and harm. Do you think that the format makes a massive difference to where people think that line is? Does the fact that you are in a physical room, perhaps up close to people, affect how we address this question?

DC & AF: Absolutely.

AF: There is the issue of consent. So, in a live space you are going into an advertised comedy night. Now, that comedy night could be anything. As a performer and MC (and organiser) you are aware that anyone could come in from the street – some regulars, some just popping in not knowing what to expect. You don't get anyone to sign a consent form. If it is likely that there will be some edgy comedy, as an MC it is probably your job to give an indication of this. As a performer you'll also be aware that it is difficult for an audience member to leave halfway through a set; perhaps it is physically difficult to leave depending on the space, but also the member of the audience could be aware that they could be picked on. You have to be quite brave to leave, particular if you are not used to coming to comedy events. But in the case of online comedy, as well as regular TV, if you don't like something, it's swiped away and it's gone, with no problem. Unlike regular TV, the content warnings aren't often as prominent or clear. Sometimes they might not be there. So, because of that I feel that there are more limitations around many live spaces compared with online spaces. Those limits can be artistically invigorating of course. What can you say and how can you say it? Can you use those limits in a self-reflexive way to address issues of free speech?

There are some exceptions, of course. Some comedy nights are billed as edgy and controversial, even ‘nasty’ and explicitly so. With these you will know what you are getting into before you enter the door.

DC: So, there is something interesting about being edgy in person. On the one hand, there is a certain issue of bullying, cases where one is being edgy about a particular member of an audience. This seems an odd thing to say, but I think that anyone can bully anyone else online, yet it takes a certain sort of conviction or to be a certain sort of person to do it live in the room. It is the wrong thing to do, of course, but it can be rarer for that reason. Of course, sometimes edgy things are not cases of bullying but still remain edgy. I have seen some skilled comedians interact with audience members and say edgy and provocative things about them or their ‘type’, whilst still making the interaction enjoyable and even artistically thrilling. As a performer it takes skill to read the room and also to create the right sort of atmosphere, of course.

We should also talk about reactions. With a live, unfilmed set, the reaction is immediate and, aside from people's memories or reviews, there isn't anything else. When you have a filmed or clipped set or something else that is in some way filmed, the whole thing can stay online for ages. People can watch it many years later, potentially. This can create problems for some performers as tastes change. Of course, comedians like any performers or artists can't know what will and will not be seen as acceptable many years hence. But they need to have some idea about what material is edgy and what might work differently as society moves on. Comedians and others often try to defend themselves by saying, ‘Oh, that was a different age. We were more innocent of these things’, or something similar. Sometimes that defence works, and sometimes it fails.

AF: I'd like to pick up on something Piers says at the end, that comedy is there to bring people to their senses. Is there a greater duty to do that, perhaps, in a live show? Face-to-face sets can have a greater power and carry greater potential to shake people up. Perhaps there is more danger here when it comes to offence and harm as we have indicated but there is also great possibility and even responsibility. If an idea is worth hearing, then it should be heard. What would be terrible is if we had a range of fairly bland comedy on offer. That is bad for comedy and for society, as you say Simon. Perhaps from a necessity of the entertainment-cum-artform, there has to be the possibility of offence and of disagreement, particularly if one stresses the ‘artform’ part of the activity.

Perhaps a reverse argument can be made for online content: it stays around more, you can return to it again and again and think about it, it can go viral. That sort of content can gain a certain power. Perhaps the main thing I want to say is this: you can explore both types of medium. It is important you do so and compare and contrast them so as to appreciate how the discussions of free speech might – might – look different depending on the medium.

PB: Alex is right that it would be a disaster for comedy if it were all bland. Of course, there is plenty of room for ‘safe’, unthreatening comedy, say for family viewing, and different genres of comedy that can be like this. But I reiterate what I said about the need for satirical comedy that hits our ‘funny bone’ by pointing out elephants in the room. Sometimes mockery exposes ludicrous beliefs where genteel discussion leaves them untouched. One problem, though, is that the people who need to be made uncomfortable by the satire are unlikely to be at the venues that host it. A proudly ‘anti-Woke’ comedy evening will attract a mostly ‘anti-Woke’ crowd who will leave it thinking how silly other people are, and how sophisticated they are. The same goes for ‘progressive’ comedy. I agree with Alex that there needs to be some element of informed consent from the audience, though there should also be room for surprise. But the advantage of filming live events and then putting them online is that it makes it more likely that people whom it should annoy will view it, while also making it easier for them to switch off if they really cannot bear it.

SK: Can I now introduce another feature? So far we haven't yet mentioned that comedy, as a form of theatre, is often experimental. In an early run of live material, one is trying out jokes and routines live, in front of an audience, and that might require changes to the material: changing the timing and the ordering of material, changing the words, dropping jokes or adding new set-ups, and so on. So, I am just wondering, Alex and Dave, what it is like when you know you are writing edgy material and how it feels when you are in those early stages of honing the material live on stage. The philosophical bite here is as follows: we want people to be artistically free and that means being free to experiment, but comedians are experimenting in a way that they know could (likely) cause offence and even harm. Crucially, they won't (really) know until they try it out live, and possibly try it a few times, in slightly different ways. I am just wondering how forgiving we should be of the artist in this situation. There is a corollary of this. If we make the general social atmosphere too intimidating, then an artist might adopt a stance of self-censorship or just generally move away from doing anything edgy. That is not good for artistic freedom and society in general, as we have indicated.

AF: Well, I have two initial responses to this. It is certainly right that it is useful to have a range of political views in the mix. And as you say, there is a danger of self-censorship. One important aspect to this, then, is the psychological approach or mood a performer must get into. You have to have a certain amount of confidence to perform anyway, be it something natural or something you have to work yourself into. Similarly, in the case of edgy material some people I know have to convince themselves – lie to themselves, even – that what they are doing is not so edgy. If you show that you are worried, especially if you don't know the crowd that well, the material won't work anyway. Of course, that comes with a qualifier. In the performance itself, seasoned performers will be able to read the room as the material is playing out, and so might draw attention to what is happening if it isn't going well, and then try to make a comedic virtue out of it by telling self-deprecating jokes, say, and adjust the set ‘in flight’.

DC: Here is a different take on the idea of self-censorship. So, I certainly think more performers that I know of are self-censoring. One interesting aspect is that some performers nowadays are still saying outrageous things but if they do, they are saying them to a narrower audience and one that is often established and recognized as the performer's ‘tribe’. So, some performers are self-censoring in general so as to appeal to a mass audience, whilst others are saying the same, familiar thing to their own tribe and are worried about upsetting people outside their circle of fans. So, the overall effect, where we worry about society atrophying because of fewer ideas being exchanged or exposed to wider portions of society, is the same. Some of this has to do with the fact that comic performers are an interesting hybrid, as we have already indicated. On the one hand they are artists (to some extent) who we are here discussing as people who can speak and influence society. On the other hand, they are straightforward entertainers who need to earn a crust. In that regard they might be tempted to choose the path of least resistance to build an audience and have a paying career.

Here is one small example of self-censorship, or rather a case where I said something I thought was perfectly fine and someone took offence, which in turn might cause me to self-censor. A performer acquaintance of mine has been on Live at the Apollo. They are a person of colour. They said to me, point blank, ‘I wouldn't have been offered that gig if I was not [insert racial profile here].’ I repeated this exchange to another performer a while later and they accused me of being racist. Now, I think they are obviously wrong to say that, but it could give one cause to refrain from sharing certain exchanges or ideas. Would I want to take the risk of relating this on stage? (Actually, in this case I might, but one can imagine other similar cases where it might not be worth it.) So, there is another aspect here. Along with losing the ability to speak and bring people together, audiences are perhaps losing the ability to be patient and appreciate nuance. A performer will be less likely to self-censor if they are confident and comfortable that the audience will appreciate what they are trying to do with edgy material: appreciate the directness of it but the nuances as well.

SK: Thanks Dave. So, just to pause on this, I want to introduce a point that has been made to me several times by comedians. Sometimes performers are trying out material, often edgy material, and they think they have got it nice and tightly written. They perform it a few times, perhaps in subtly different ways. Each time it gets a laugh. But the laugh comes at just the wrong moment or it is the wrong type of laugh. The performer knows that each time the audience, or at least a significant part of the various audiences, is laughing at the wrong thing. Perhaps they are making a joke involving race or gender or age, but it isn't a racist, or sexist, or ageist joke itself. But instead of the audience picking up on the intended point of the joke, they laugh in a way that suggests that some of them are racist, sexist, or ageist. And even if the comedian draws attention to this fact in the act, it doesn't work. So, they drop the joke or the material. I think there is something interesting here where the performer self-censors because the audiences are not properly prepared for or attuned to the material. The performer has to take responsibility because the audiences are not responsible enough. That is important in the case of free speech, offence, and harm.

DC: Yes. Let's fill this out with a personal example. I used to do a quick routine based on the fact that my partner is from Northern Ireland. It involved various things, but it revolved around the fact that I sometimes can't understand my partner because of her accent, so there was a little play on me misunderstanding her. That was it. I had to be careful, because sometimes when you mention Northern Ireland you do get ‘the wrong sort of laugh’, as you mention, Simon. But the material was genuinely just playful and the focus was on a couple miscommunicating with one another, how words and phrases can be heard differently. So, I was doing this routine once when I was MC-ing. I finished and introduced a big-name comic. A woman left her seat and missed the set of this comic specifically to approach me and tell me that I was offensive to talk about Northern Ireland as an English person. I listened to her and was apologetic and asked if she had had any experience with the violence there, and she said she hadn't. She was English and from Surrey. She just knew there was a lot of history in Northern Ireland and that as an English person I shouldn't be joking about it. I explained to her that that wasn't the point of the joke, but she wouldn't listen. I have dropped that material now, which is a shame, because it isn't worth that sort of hassle. So that is a type of self-censorship.

AF: Yes, you have to be really careful as the MC, because you are often seen as the controller of the show, its moral authority. And one reflection from me here, is that the reaction from an audience – the laughter, the groans, the applause – is a type of speech act. Obviously, it is complicated: it is spontaneous, it is often group-based from part or whole of the audience. But it is a contribution to what happens in the moment and, as you say Simon and as Dave has illustrated, it affects what comedians say over time and what they say to which type of audience. That is something that gets to the heart of free speech in the public realm.

Of course, saying something like this itself to audiences is tricky. Telling them they have to think carefully before and as they laugh is the last thing you want to do as a performer! You want them to be spontaneous and authentic. Also, you might not want to tell them how much power they have. I suspect there are some skilled comedians who could make a virtue out of this sort of thing. UK comedian Stewart Lee will often directly reflect on how his audience is reacting. Yet, there are only so many ways you can do this type of ‘meta-set’.

SK: Piers, any thoughts from you on this example and the very idea of self-censorship?

PB: In one obvious way, self-censorship is essential to a civilised society – most of us restrain ourselves from saying what we are tempted to say, for example to an annoying boss. But when it comes to performances, we need to be clear about the worry that motivates self-censorship. If you are afraid of losing your income if you make certain jokes, it makes sense not to make them. But it is still a shame. Maybe you should look for different venues. If the worry is that the audience – or more likely, a few hyper-sensitive audience members – will not like what you say, you should probably resist the impulse to self-censor. You are probably causing no harm, and self-censorship often gives moralising bullies the power they crave. It is a shame that Dave felt he had to drop his ‘Northern Irish’ jokes because of one grandstanding woman who didn't get the point of his gags. On the problem of getting the ‘wrong sort of laughter’, I fear that here too there is a danger of hypervigilance. The worry is presumably that you reinforce harmful ideas. We must always ask what the evidence is that you are doing this, when the audience already has these ideas. You might want to fine-tune the material to make the real point clearer. But if your real point was a good one, you should probably take the risk of misunderstanding, which exists in all art. The alternative is the risk of the blandness that we agree we should not be forced into.

AF: I think one thing Piers says that is really central is that comedy can be a transgressive space. It is a space that is sacred. It is valuable simply because one can say various things and raise particular topics often with fewer consequences. (Think of the fabled jester poking fun in a Royal Court.) I suppose because of that there is a heightened sense for some performers of taking responsibility in case there are consequences. (The example of clipping comes back here, to my mind.) So, the idea that I have often heard mentioned in the green room in clubs is that live performance comedy is a type of release valve, a healthy space to say what you want to.

This brings me to a question for Piers and all of us. As well as working out the balance between offence and harm – which I suppose is the undercurrent of much of our discussion so far – there are two other things in potential tension. Live comedy and its venues can be seen as transgressive spaces where lots of taboo subjects can be tackled in provocative ways. But they can also be seen as places of therapy – either for the performer or the group – where we similarly explore various issues, often personal issues, but in a more sensitive and empathetic way. We might also think about taboos, but not in such a provocative way and certainly not with the aim of causing offence or harm. Indeed, we would take every opportunity to steer clear of such effects. These two approaches don't have to be at odds, but often they can be. They are different ways of bringing people to their senses – to use Piers’ phrase – and exploring things, but having the two approaches on at the same night in the same set of acts could be quite jarring.

PB: Yes, comedians do address their personal issues in their routines. When they do, they sometimes slide between their usual humour and straight talk, creating a hybrid performance. The mixture can be rather awkward. Or it might be that they are using humour throughout but switching between rehearsed ‘in-your-face’ humour and personal revelation in a mildly humorous style, a bit like a talk with some jokey asides. Some people are naturally witty, even if they would not make good stand-up comedians. Wit and irony can have a therapeutic effect. But ‘transgressive spaces’ where these things can flourish are important, partly because they allow performers to try out ideas and let off steam without commitment. Conversations between friends can be like this. They allow a free-flowing, tentative honesty, without the fear of being quoted and held to account. When you don't need to self-censor, what comes out might be shocking if construed as a final statement, but less so when recognised as a stream of consciousness, where the genuine insights behind shocking ideas may be explored and either carefully built upon or defused.

Incidentally, I have noticed social media change since about 2010 from a space for tentative, humorous hinting at random, possibly disturbing ideas, to a space for definitive provocations. That is a loss. We are breeding a society of literal-minded bullies. Humour has always pushed against this, and literal-minded people are a staple butt of humour. There is a reason why the libertarian comedian Andrew Doyle's latest book is called The New Puritans.

AF: And now another thing! It is all very well to talk of comedy as free speech. But what effects does it have? Does it change anything? I suppose one could cite the example of Mark Thomas as a UK comedian who through his comedy activism has literally changed laws. The satire boom of the 1950s and 1960s changed some people's views about politicians and politics, and arguably it led the decline in deference rather than just followed existing social change. But these are rare occurrences. Can we think of other cases? It is all very well for comedy to be free and involve a lot of free speech, but does it change anything?

SK: Nice question. Well, here is a challenge back, Alex. In order to show that comedy as a form of free speech is valuable because it has effects, do we have to cite quite singular and individual examples, or cite only such examples? Whilst harder to evidence, there is also the effect of a general wave of speaking and thinking in a certain way about certain people or topics, where such freedom can change minds over time. There is a drip-drip-drip effect. Perhaps the satire boom is one such example. With the benefit of history we can link what happened with Private Eye and Beyond the Fringe to changes in attitudes about politics, but at the time it would have been particular examples that were given, as is the case with Mark Thomas. Similarly, the UK Alternative Comedy explosion in the early 1980s changed views about how to treat certain people and about what topics were ripe for comedic treatment, just as various comedians in the 1970s helped to harden very different views about types of people. What we see is the articulation of a certain worldview over time that shifts debate or shifts thinking. That might be the type of effect we can see in modern performance comedy. But the freedom that a range of performers have to contribute to or rail against this worldview is valuable and telling, nonetheless.

I suppose this links to the second issue I mentioned at the start. We have this constant drip-drip-drip effect that can change the views of people. I mentioned that comedy has a certain popularity and can be seductive. Should it be under more scrutiny because it can make difficult views appealing, disguising the challenging with a belly laugh?

AF: Yes, good. I think that seems right. It would be good to see some sociological research about this: how attitudes and mores change as a result of certain trends on comedy performance.

I think that comedy or other artistic and entertainment media can make otherwise unpalatable views appealing. A lot of comedians can take an anti-hero stance, and confessional comedy can normalise our vices by making us laugh at them. I'm sure there are positive and negative effects to this depending on how it is done. In that sense, it is seductive.

TikTok and Instagram are really important parts of how stand-up is consumed and are worth emphasizing; we'll take them completely for granted soon but the effect today still feels new. We have already indicated that a lot of recorded ‘clip comedy’ feeds into an algorithm that rewards the shocking and the polarising. Many crowd-work clips feel to me like they bait the audience member into saying something that the comedian can react to. The comedian always wins the exchange, of course, a seductive thing to watch. A lot of comedians say that crowd-work clips are normalising heckling and interruptions in live stand-up; this is evidence that the content and style of comedy being performed does change how audiences and acts behave and think over relatively short timescales, since the clip explosion is a post-Covid-19 pandemic phenomenon. The social media platforms do relatively little to control the comedic talent on their platforms in a consistent way. Perhaps because they cannot monitor the great amount of content produced, or the automated systems are too unfocused, or as is particularly the case with X (ex-Twitter) its owner doesn't believe in controls on such things. Arguably they probably benefit from some of the provocative content. To be provocative is seductive, especially with short clips that require attention quickly. For good or ill, a seductive performance has the power to normalise views and behaviour, particularly if the algorithm gives you repeated similar content. I have two phones (work and personal) and switch devices when my social media gives me too much of the same content. It can be surprising how different feeds can be. The social media bubble is an enduring and important phenomenon.

DC:This is really interesting. Not to speak ‘too academically’, but in Plato's Republic the poets were censored because of their influence. I always thought it funny that a limerick could corrupt civilisation, because I genuinely do think that comedy has a much more subconscious effect. After all, people like to laugh, it makes them feel good. And, as the phrase goes, ‘you don't remember what people say, you remember how they make you feel’. Politicians, leaders, and influencers now seem to use this in order to make people warm to them, and by extension warm to ideas they might not be otherwise receptive too.

PB: Of course, comedy can be seductive, for good or ill. Flippancy can corrode sensibilities. Whereas the moralist might try to argue that some aspect of the status quo is bad, the comedian can present it as laughable. Change can happen that way even if the causality is hard to demonstrate. There is an interesting discussion to be had about whether good satire – i.e. material that is good as satire – tracks moral truth, much as good literature might. But then again, bad satire and literature easily pass as good and there can be bad social effects. But I would again distinguish the question of the merit of comedy from whether it should be censored. One good reason for being suspicious of censorship is that we often have little reason to trust the censor. That is why an atmosphere of freedom is important, although much more needs to be said.

Comedy certainly can function as a dark persuader. Philosophers study arguments and are especially irritated by informal fallacies and emotive rhetoric. Comedians who try to persuade using jokes can, if necessary, invoke a kind of ‘comedian's defence’ when caught out, saying that they were only being funny and should not be held to lofty standards of logic. To counter them you feel obliged to use humour yourself, and you may not be good at that. So, there are problems. But it is worth asking whether really bad ideas are easily defended using humour. Maybe terrible jokes and terrible ideas have a mutual affinity. Can someone who thinks vaccination drives are a conspiracy easily defend that idea in a genuinely funny way?

SK: Can I use this topic just to bring us back to an idea. We have used the phrase ‘entertainment-cum-artform’. There is a danger of building this phrase up too much and placing all comedy at the heart of a debate about free speech. We talk about self-censorship because we bend towards the artistic. But if comedy is just entertainment, or at least many examples of it are just entertainment, then perhaps some comedians drop material simply because it doesn't get many laughs. They are just in it to entertain. They don't care about issues of self-censorship or the balance between offence and harm where they are struggling to push society's tolerance for truth. They just want to make people laugh and pay their bills.

DC & AF: Yes, exactly.

AF: There are all sorts of nuances here to explore. As performers we might tell ourselves white lies about why we are dropping some material or changing it. What counts as cancellation and what counts as the material not being good enough. And so on.

I have lines I might really like but are difficult to make work. For example, I'm a big believer in listening to a variety of media sources, particularly those you might disagree with, and I have a bit about the Rest is Politics podcast. This bit is on my ‘maybe’ list to put into a set. (My ‘maybe’ list often functions as being ‘one step away from the bin’.) Right now, I'm not sure whether it's on the ‘maybe’ list because it isn't good enough or whether it's because I feel somewhat judged for having a soft spot for Rory Stewart.

PB: It is worth expanding on Simon's point about comedy existing simply to entertain. I once interviewed Richard Ingrams when he was the editor of Private Eye. I asked him whether the purpose of the magazine was to do grand things like expose hypocrisy. No, said Ingrams – that would be very pompous. Its purpose was to provide a few jokes. I think we need to remember that. Some comedy openly pursues agendas, but performers should not be too self-important. I suspect that when they get famous and full of themselves, they get less funny. Humbly making an audience laugh, or at least inviting it to in hope or desperation, is no mean feat.

SK: I think that is a nice note to end on. I don't think we are any closer to getting a definitive answer on the boundaries between offence and harm within comedy, but it was really good to surface other issues, such as the role of the audience, the various media that modern comedians operate across, and the conflicting demands of performers to name just a few. Thanks very much for joining me, Piers, Alex, and Dave.