Lee Hurst - STILL NOT FUNNY

Those who look in regularly on Zelo Street will need to introduction to former comedian and now ranting racist bigot Lee Hurst, who has gone from appearing on prime time TV to having difficulty filling modestly sized venues, perhaps because he is reduced to advertising his shows on his Twitter feed. The far right politics don’t help.

Hurst has spoken favourably of Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, as well as the likes of Arron Banks and his equally slippery side-kick Andy Wigmore. In support of the latter, he made a singularly defamatory accusation against the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr. He also backs Combover Crybaby Donald Trump.

All of that may explain why so many of those who tuned in to watch him all those years ago have since moved in the direction of away. Hence the implicit desperation in his Tweet “Great night at The King's Hall, Herne Bay with my Local Comedy Club last night. Another sold out show with a fantastic audience. Next one is 8th June. It'll be on sale tomorrow”. Can’t sell out his local comedy club more than once in six months? Oh dear.

Still, he did have some Labour bashing to keep him occupied: “It's #HolocaustMemorialDay or as they call it in certain sections of the Labour Party... Sunday”. Laugh? I thought I’d never start. But he did have a serious point to make - that he wanted to blame Holocaust denial not on Labour, but Scary Muslims™.

You think I jest? Here it comes. “5% of adults in the UK do not believe the holocaust happened. Is there any breakdown on who in our society thinks this? In other news, 5% of the UK population are muslims”. Perhaps it’s an inability to find the Shift key. More likely it’s another failed attempt at humour by not typing the word Muslims correctly.

But he was just getting started. After one Tweeter responded “That's a cheap shot Lee”, he sneered “Your party is rife with anti semitism so jog on. I have merely pointed out some facts”. Didn’t type anti-Semitism correctly, either. Equal opportunity bigotry.

The Tweeter Hurst sneered at countered “Your research skills are obviously as third rate as your comedy”, while another respondent added “Hey! He’s gone from prime time BBC to plugging his winter tour of Essex on his twitter profile, what do you mean third rate”. Also, his comeback has been going for almost nine years so far, and he, well, hasn’t.

So did he stop and think? Well, he may have stopped, but thinking was out of the question: “To the swarm of 'Herd' left currently venting their spleen at me. Not talking about something that might be a factor doesn't make it go away. Mind you, you did sweep mass child rape under the carpet for fear of causing offence, so you do have form”.

That’s the kind of thing that may find favour with the likes of Stephen Lennon, but it is also the accusation that got former UKIP MEP Jane Collins hit with a defamation suit brought by three Labour MPs - which she lost. Very clearly and very expensively.

Those comedy bookings never do materialise, do they? I wonder why that might be.

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