Right now, somewhere in Britain, someone (probably with too many tatoos and too few interests outside of Beer and Football) will be commiting some act of racism, whether it be spray-painting swastikas onto walls or trying to relieve some unfortunate ethnic minority of their habit of breathing or continuing to be alive.  Somewhere else, an aging, balding bigot slouches in his armchair wearing a string vest and Y-fronts, and tries to focus his little intellect on writing yet more racist and biggotted material in the name of 'Comedy'.  We are, of course talking about Bernard Manning.  Ok, so the above image we painted of Manning sitting in a chair in his underwear writing racist material may not be entirely justified, after all at this time we have no evidence to present to you to support the notion that Manning can read and write.

So where is this going?  Well, as you have probably read, Manning is to perform at the BNP's (British National Party) summer social event.  Obviously to call the BNP "right-wing" is something of an understatement.  They are so far from the left wing that they cannot see the tip of the left wing because of the gentle curvature of space-time in the universe.  If a Boeing 747 had just as an extremely pronounced right wing it would probably only be able to fly in circles, or would crash into the departure lounge on take of, destroying Tie Rack, and damaging Pret-a-Mangé.

However, views of the BNP aside, Manning is probably not considered a credible comedian in the UK anymore.  Not just by true comedy enthusiasts, but by the general public as well.  In a recent documentary on Channel 4, which charted Manning attempting something of a comedy tour in India, manning was generally the but of the joke.  The audience of the show were laughing at him, not with him, a fact that Manning seemed completely oblivious too.  People watching his show on television were observing him, in the same way they might observe the behaviour of some kind of animal in a BBC nature documentary.  The rather appropriate parallels with "Walking with Dinosaurs" is uncanny.

So if we're saying that Manning is dying out, and the only chance of his comedy returning to us is if we discover him encased in amber in years to come, and give new life to Manning by mixing his DNA with that of frogs (eventually leading to some kind of disaster involving manning breaching electric fences and developing the problem solving skills to turn door handles), is there a problem?  Well, yes.  You see, Manning is not the only person propogating such biggotted rubbish.  And unfortunately, some of it is very very mainstream.

I wouldn't expect Adolf Hitler to present Catchphrase, or Slobodan Malosovic to present Family Fortunes.  So why is is that Jim Davidson remains in the public eye presenting prime-time family shows such as Big Break and The Generation Game.  By day he gleens this fake family-friendly credibility then by night probably ethnic-cleanses cute and cuddly kittens for having the wrong colour fur by sending them to the gas chamber.  Davidsons material combines the most horrific elements of bigotry, racism, sexism and homophobia.  This is bad enough, but allowing him to do this behind the mask of a friendly mainstream family-entertainer is like allowing Tony Martin to run the clay-pidgeon shoot at the Feltham Young Offenders Institution annual fun-day. 

With all the new comic talent available, what is even more worrying is the fact that Jim Davidson is still doing regular stand-up performances on BBC1, and apparently getting reasonable ratings (I mean, there just  can't be that many 'Sun Readers' out there, can there?).  In his latest TV and Live standup appearance Davidson has slightly changed his style.  He no longer reams off Manning-style working-mens club jokes, but instead attempts to spin the same punchlines into annecdotes, normally about himself.  Unfortunately Davidson, your offensive material is not made any funnier by adding three minutes of 'padding' on either side of each joke. 

Isn't it about time that these angry little bigots like Jim Davidson were off our screens (and stages) for good, to make way for newer, funnier talents?  And if they are really good, and refuse not to offend anyone or open their mouths, we might even allow Davidson or Manning have employement selling choc-ices during the interval - so long as Manning does not attempt to pick all the chocolate off because it is a different colour to the ice cream.