The Ban On Ricky Gervais’ Billboard Saying “Welcome To London, Don’t Forget Your Stab Vest” Shows We Are No Longer Free
Authored by Lee Taylor via DailySceptic.org
Last week, Britain’s comedy treasure, Ricky Gervais, took to social media to rant about how his proposed billboards for Dutch Barn Vodka had been rejected.
Each banner featured a dark but hilarious slogan that would have inevitably won the applause of Britain’s disillusioned masses.
Its rejected lines include:
- “Dutch Barn, drugs this good are usually illegal.”
- “Dutch Barn, your tube driver’s favourite drink in the morning.”
- “Dutch Barn, one day you’ll be underground for good.”
Ironically, the slogan to cause the most amusement of all among social media followers was the following:
- “Welcome to London, don’t forget your stab vest.”
Brits particularly appreciated this version as it bravely stood as a dark, tongue-in-cheek nod to Britain’s knife-crime epidemic.
But to the rule makers it was just another offensive idea that was banned due to being too ‘inappropriate’.
Merely a day after Gervais delivered his rant, reality took a terrifying turn. On a Doncaster-to-London train, a man went on a blood-fuelled rage, stabbing 10 innocent people. Real life quickly turned darker than the joke, and not even the most intuitive writers could have scripted it.
Gervais, who has made a career out of saying what others daren’t, simply held up a mirror. The reaction proved his point: in Britain today you can be stabbed on your commute, but you can’t harmlessly address it on a poster. And, if you have to know a single fact about the British psyche, it is that we cope by mocking life’s miseries – that’s the British spirit for you.
Transport for London was quick to deny the censorship, insisting the campaign was never formally rejected. Who knows, maybe it was all a publicity stunt – but that only underscores the point. In today’s climate, Gervais’s kind of humour wouldn’t stand a chance of official approval.
Source Zero Hedge