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After Little Britains brief return to radio last October a "Little Brexit" special David Walliams says the sketch will definitely be back. I cant say when exactly," he toldThe Sun. "But at the right time and place."

Since the show was last broadcast, a pair of Christmas specials in 2006, Little Britain has been re-evaluated and criticised for its portrayal of gay, trans, and ethnic minority characters.But what about Matt Lucas and Walliamss other sketch show,ComeFlywithMe?

The spoof airport documentary was controversial even at the time of broadcast in 2010. Now, with adecade of hindsight, it feels like something that belongs in the Seventies, with Lucas and Walliams playing as a cast of characters including painted-up racial stereotypes.

Among them was coffee kiosk manager Precious, a Jamaican woman (played by Lucas with blackface and a comedy West Indian accent) whos too lazy to do a full days work and shouts Praise the Lord!; Taaj (Lucas), a deeply stupid ground crew worker of Pakistani descent, who ends each sentence with Isnt it or Dyou getme?; Moses (Walliams, also tanned-up), a camp executive passenger liaison; and dodgy Arab billionaire Omar Baba (Walliams in double-chinned disguise), owner of fictional budget airline Flylo, apparently based on easyjet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou.

First broadcast on Christmas Day 2010, the debut episode ofComeFlywithMedrew 10.3 million viewers the third biggest TV audience of the day and most watched comedy of the year. But complaints came quickly. Twitter users soon likenedComeFlywithMeto the Black & White Minstrel Show and accused it of stepping clumsily over the line into overt racism.

But the show had its supporters too. Jim Davidson, known for routines about his West Indian friend "Chalky", leapt to their defence inThe Sun probably not the ally Matt and David were hoping for.

Lucas appeared to disown the show when it was reported that he had vetoed a second series, despite being commissioned by the BBC. Lucas has since spoken about the well-meaning intentions behind the characters and to his credit, with far more reflection and humility than the standard it was a different time defence. But for both stars, theres no escaping the shameful history ofComeFlywithMe.

Speaking together on aComeFlywithMemaking of documentary, Lucas and Walliams recalled the show was an attempt to do something fresh, without the weight of Little Britains huge mainstream success. They brainstormed various ideas and formats.

We had one idea, said Lucas, [about] a couple of actors, who had been in some sort of Seventies show together, that was now regarded as really un-PC. And they were going around America because they couldnt get any work. Nothing came of it.

From their various ideas, the BBC was keen to develop the airport doc concept. In spirit, it was very much like Little Britain Lucas and Walliams as cartoonish characters, with sketches loosely threaded by running gags: passenger liaison Moses and his kids charity Wish Wings, using the proceeds to indulge in the gay scenes of various locations; a terminally stupid burger shop worker Tommy whos trying to work his way up to pilot; two supposed best friends on the check-in desk who go to war over a promotion.

Unlike Little Britain, which began on Radio 4 and worked its way up through the channels until until it hit BBC One,ComeFlywithMelanded on the prime Christmas Day slot.ButComeFlywithMewas out-of-date straight off the runway. The mock-doc concept came 10 years after That Peter Kay Thing and The Office; far broader in its execution that those influential shows, Come Fly With Me's characters seemed troublingly out-of-step. Watched again in 2020 (its all on Netflix), its inconceivable that the BBC would commission something likeComeFlywithMe.

Now, of course, the concept of offence is thrown back and forth in the deafening, un-winnable shouting match between left and right, woke and alt-right. It's a time dominated by discourse about so-called cancel culture and the ever shifting parameters of whats acceptable. Social media and industry voices demand representation for race, sexual orientation, gender identity with appropriate actors cast in those roles and every possible facet of art and interaction is examined for problematic subtext.

Jamie Oliver cant rustle up some jerk chicken without a three-day Twitter firestorm about cultural appropriation never mind Matt Lucas in a painted brown rubber mask, afro wig, and fat suit, shouting, Praise the Lord!

We wrote that material, we played those characters, Matt Lucas said on Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast. But we werent asked the questions then that we would be asked now.

Actually,ComeFlywithMeis funnier that critics will admit. Theres a running joke about a couple who have the holiday from hell each episode everything from finding their hotel isnt properly built to being hijacked by pirates and kidnapped by a voodoo tribe which taps into great British pastime of moaning; and the shoddily run budget airline, with flights delayed up to a year, is amusing, if depressingly real.

Theres also Irish airline steward Fearghal, who who resorts to underhanded tactics to win the Air Steward of the Year award and tries to seduce a straight colleague because, according to him, the only difference between a straight and bisexual man is two pints of lager (cut to them in a pub Another pint of lager? asks Fearghal).

But at its worst,ComeFlywithMeis deeply uncomfortable viewing. Its difficult to imagine that the character of Precious was ever a good (or indeed, funny) idea; airline owner Omar Baba is like every stereotype about dodgy foreign businessmen rolled into one wobbly-chinned charlatan (Babas cost-cutting ranges from having no toilets on board to charging passengers for life jackets); and a scene in which Lucas and Walliams play Japanese teenage girls in full East Asian prosthetics is a throwback to decades-old depictions of Oriental characters.

Dwarves are also used for visual gags part of a PR scam by Baba to make his planes look roomier and David Schwimmer makes an unexpected cameo for a skit about trans porn. The show plummets to its offensive nadir with Moses thats Walliams painted up as a nondescript BAME character speaking mock Chinese dialect to a Chinaman. Pardon the pun, as Moses says, but it just wouldntflyin 2020.

Asked about the issue of playing characters of different ethnicities on the making of documentary, Lucas said if it was a different concept if they were just the writers, or it was an ensemble cast they would have likely cast a 55-year-old black woman to play Precious. But thats not the concept of the show, he said.

I think its a hard one because there is a pleasure in seeing us dressed up, said Walliams. And there is something pleasurable about sometimes they are outrageous looks [...] where you go, Oh my word, I cant believe the make-up.But I think the character needs to be funny beyond its racial characteristics... all the characters weve created of different ethnicities, I think theyve been comic characters not specifically to do with their race.

The duo have form, of course. In Little Britain, which began on BBC Three in 2003, characters included Daffyd, the only gay in the village, which Lucas later learned was used as a taunt against gay kids in schools; Emily Howard, the overly masculine transvestite, who would be accused of being anti-trans now, while back in the mid-2000s, the trans community was, as Lucas has said, invisible; Desiree, a morbidly obese black woman (played by Walliams in blackface), seemingly played for laughs because, at a base level, shes fat and black; and Thai bride Ting Tong. Writing in his 2017 autobiography LittleMe, Matt Lucas also recalled being accused of class tourism for portraying characters such as Vicky Pollard, thick-headed Bristolian teenage mum.

Lucas has commented that the intention with both Little Britain andComeFlywithMewas to represent and celebrate multiculturalism in Britain plus, on a shallower level, show off the range of characters they could play. Fat, thin, tall, short, straight, gay, male, female, young, old," Lucas wrote in his book. "David and I saw playing different races as part of that.

Lucas has admitted that Ting Tong was a mistake. I thought we got the tone of those sketches wrong, he wrote in LittleMe, calling the execution too rudimentary and insensitive. My performance was crude and simplistic and hard to defend, he wrote. I have a feeling that if we hadnt spent all the time and money on those prosthetics we might have reviewed those sketches and cut them out of the show.

Speaking to Richard Herring, Lucas recalled that growing up it was common to see white comedians gets laughs out of playing black characters.

When I was a little kid I would see predominantly white people on television and they would often play black people," he said. "And there was a moment after that I felt I the late Eighties and Nineties where that didnt happen, where people said, 'Its wrong to make comedy out of the fact youre a white person playing a black person, that is not acceptable for comedy.' When we were doing Little Britain andComeFlyMeit felt like things had gone somewhere else again after that.

Lucas and Williams did belong to a generation of comedians who confronted controversial issues head on with irony and satire. Ricky Gervais in The Office, the 11 OClock Show, and in his stand-up used ironically offensive language. Father Ted put a lampshade on his head and pulled his eyes into slits. Alan Partridge boasted he was homo-sceptic". And Ali G asked Is it because I is black? Comedians pushed the parameters of political correctness to prove they were in on joke in fact, they made themselves the joke as a way of mockingprejudices. It was understood that they were so clearly liberal, it was all done in the same of satire.

The same is true of Lucas and Walliams. According to Lucas, Little Britain characters Daffyd and Emily were intended as a celebration of queerness and they sent up racist attitudes inComeFlywithMethrough Walliamss immigration officer Ian Foot, whos suspicious of anyone foreign or non-white.

However, they seemed to think comedy had moved on so much that it was also acceptable to black-up if the intent wasnt to mine laughs out of racism.

I think if youre accentuating racial characteristics for laughs youre on dangerous ground, said Walliams on the making of doc. If youre portraying someone from a different race it should be OK, you know, because it used to be people would black-up but they would make jokes very much at the expense of black people about their appearance and I think thats now gone.

"And then time passed when no one did it. Now it seems acceptable. And in a sketch show its a little different. We wouldnt do a whole series about two Japanese girls, it would be a bit odd, but I think for a couple of minutes its acceptable.

Its a staggeringly nave attitude the kind of naivety that can reallycomefrom a position of privilege, itself a concept that was much less discussed in 2010. Ten years afterComeFlywithMe, theres no way two successful white male performers could decide whether or not its fine to play different ethnicities.

While the first series of Little Britain was very good, it became as broad as it was successful in the following two series they received the the kind of lowest common denominator backlash that Mrs Browns Boys faces now. Lucas and Walliams have arguably been the targets of some selective retrospective wokeness. Certainly, other comedians seem impervious to similar criticisms.

You rarely hear the universally-loved Vic and Bob being criticised for wearing blackface when they played Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye; or Harry Enfield for playing Greek stereotype Stavros and later Nelson Mandela; or Chris Morris, one of the lefts favourite comedy minds, performing Uzi Lover while blacked-up in The Day Today; or national treasure Jim Royle for making homophobic slurs.

Walliams was accused of racism again in 2017 for dressing as Kim Jong-un for Halloween. Hes also commented that he understands Little Britain would have to be different if it does indeed return but they'd still push boundaries.

Its hard to say specifically how it would be different, he toldtold the Radio Times. Theres all kinds of tolerances that change. People understand peoples predicaments more now I wouldnt rule out anything because I basically think you have to be able to make jokes about everything, everyone. Otherwise there is no point having comedy.

Matt Lucas continues to be apologetic and reflective about it he can often be seen on Twitter responding to accusations of racism by providing explanations and context.

SpeakingtoThe Big Issue in 2017about Little Britain, Lucas outlined what he would and wouldnt do now. I wouldnt play black characters, he said. Basically, I wouldnt make that show now. It would upset people. We made a more cruel kind of comedy than Id do now. Society has moved on a lot since then, and my own views have evolved. There was no bad intent there the only thing you could accuse us of was greed.

"We just wanted to show off about what a diverse bunch of people we could play. Now I think its lazy for white people to get a laugh just by playing black characters. My aim is to entertain, I dont have any other agenda. And as Ive got older, Ive become more empathetic, I care more about hurting people.

This piece is part ofScreenSecrets,a regularseries telling the untold stories behind film and TV's greatest hits and most fascinating flops

Read the original here:
The Come Fly with Me controversy: how did Walliams and Lucas's 'racist' comedy get off the ground? - Telegraph.co.uk