Caning the toad: redefining 'woke'

We were enjoying last night’s episode of QI XL, a programme that explores interesting facts and provides opportunities for laughs, many of them a bit bawdy but reflecting on the human condition.

And then, a propos of bugger-all, Phil Jupitus had to bring Brexit into it.

The segment was about cane toads in Australia, and we got a close-up of one:

At 19:07 in: (stupid, gravelly voice) Hullo (audience laughter)… I definitely think we should leave Europe.”

So, funny because the supposed speaker is old? Or ill-educated? Or white?

If I were a wokester, I guess I could have him on my checklist of offences: ageist, elitist, racist.

Bear in mind that Brexit wasn’t the topic under discussion and there was no lead-in even from Jupitus. It was just something that his daft metropolitan audience (the programme is recorded in the London Studios, Waterloo) could be guaranteed to agree-laugh at. It’s almost Bernard Manning for right-on bigots.

But Jupitus is not himself daft. He’s a grammar-school boy, making his money off an easily pleased English fanbase although he lives in Fife.

And the TV will try to persuade us that the country thinks like these degree-holder morons.

The episode (#241) was first aired on 25 October 2019. I don’t suppose the result of the General Election a couple of months later will have changed his opinions (or the opinions he affects to hold while in performance), any more than that of the 2016 Referendum.

But ‘woke’ is about falling for the emo-traps set for us by the real elite, who encourage us to study the contents of our underpants so we can’t see the power-grabs going on around the world.

And there’s a class of clever, well-rewarded entertainers employed to play to audience prejudice.

‘If you could see them with my eyes, they wouldn’t look British at all.’

I wonder how these salon sallies would play in coastal fishing communities; in the broken mining areas; in the housing estates around closed steelworks; in the built-over former car factories; on the struggling farms across the country?