Ed Byrne: 'Sachsgate' prank phone call negatively changed the face of TV comedy

Mock the Week star Ed Byrne says the infamous ‘Sachsgate’ prank phone call by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand negatively changed the face of TV comedy.

In 2008, Ross was a guest on Brand’s BBC Radio 2 show, where the pair left a voicemail on beloved Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs’ answerphone, making lewd and sexual remarks about his granddaughter.

Although Brand resigned and Ross was suspended without pay, the two protagonists’ careers remain largely unscathed.

That, according to Byrne, cannot be said for the BBC, who, along with TV comedy producers, have restricted what comedians can and cannot say ever since the scandal.                    
           

 “Around the whole Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand incident, comedy had to conform to a lot of different forms of compliance, including Mock the Week,” he said. 

“There was a much stricter view on things and since then everything was looked at more carefully across TV in general. It did have a limiting effect on what you could and could not say.

“It had a negative impact on TV comedy as there was increased control in terms of watching what you had to say.”

TV host James Corden was recently lambasted for his churlish jokes over the Harvey Weinstein scandal, bringing up the age old question, ‘Where is the line for comedians?’

“The joke has to be really good when covering controversial topics. An audience can sometimes forgive you if you do something politically questionable if it is utterly hilarious,” said Byrne, who is currently on the road with his Spoiler Alert tour.

“If it is just a hack joke that it wasn’t worth bringing up the subject, then people are less inclined to give it a pass.

“Frankie Boyle is a perfect example of someone who can make a joke and you can hate yourself for laughing at it. But because it is so funny but you don’t care that it is wrong.

“Everyone has their own line personally. For many it is not the subject material, it is how you handle it.

“In theory nothing should be off the table, no subject should not be talked about but it is how sensitively you go about it and whether or not you take humour from something without taking the piss out of it.

“Making a joke that concerns a subject is not the same thing as mocking that subject.

“Paedophilia would be a classic example. It is the most horrible, shocking and stomach churning topic that there is. But to say there aren’t a bunch of jokes that people are doing concerning it would be a lie.

“It also depends on the comedian and the audience. Generally however, that is not a furrow that I plough, I am not someone that is considered a shocking comic.”