A Hauraki Radio host, Thane Kirby, made a fairly corny but harmless joke about covid tracing as a way to trace attractive women. According to the news report, a (predictably) female listener complained to the Broadcasting Standards Authority, saying this was “disgusting and would give men ideas.”
God help us. Putting aside the reality that men don’t need ideas to pursue attractive women, there’s one thing I’d wager long odds on. That is that the complainant is bloody ugly, probably fat, and certainly freaks aside, someone no bloke, would have any wish to trace.
Apparently Kirby’s audience is mainly male and he has form for this sort of blokey wise-cracking. The obvious step for the complainant is not to listen to him.
People such as the anonymous complainant are a plague on contemporary society with their persistent offence-seeking. It’s a huge pity that complainants’ names bitching to well-intended agencies such as the BSA aren’t publicized.
Here’s a tale that will cheer.
Four decades back for a few years I stood in annually for a week for the Wellington and Christchurch ZB morning radio hosts so they could have a break.
One year in Christchurch, in the course of discussion I mentioned Poms.
The next morning a letter awaited me from the Race Relations Office saying they’d received a complaint, but, the silly bugger writing it (a Samoan chap) mentioned the name and business address of the complainant. This turned out to be a bleak little suburban hardware store owner.
So I gave him hell all morning on radio leading to heaps of listeners standing outside his premises hurling well deserved abuse at him.
The Race Relations Chief then delivered a letter to me advising they’d rejected this miserable sod’s complaint, although far from that causing me to desist abusing him as they requested, I laid it on even thicker.
Needless to say, the complainant wasn’t a Pom but just a world class loser looking for something to whine about.
In my recently published book of four comic novellas, one deals with the criminal prosecution of an Irish labourer, charged with calling a black London Council so-called Outreach Officer, a “clumsy fucking black poncy bastard.”
Judging by my mail, the Courtroom demolition job on the Council activist offence-seeking Outreach Officer by an incensed elderly barrister, who fed up with this sort of crap, on reading of the prosecution, came out of retirement to defend the Irishman pro-bono, has pleased many readers.
Standards are important in everything in life but so too is tolerance. There’s room for both to survive and thrive.
I personally can’t imagine ever listening to Kirby’s radio show, aside from the fact I don’t own a radio, but plainly it brings pleasure to others with its laddish carry-on and that’s sufficient to justify it.
The choice is obvious, namely if it’s not to one’s appetite then don’t bloodywell listen. Most of all, don’t listen when an ounce of common-sense should tell you it’s not to your taste and then complain about it.