satirists-from-northern-ireland

"I don't think that you can be an artist if you are simply trying to gauge what the acceptable point of view is. Or, indeed, if you are using your art as a conduit to express whatever the vogueish ideology of the time happens to be. And that is what has happened. If you go to any theatrical production in the [United Kingdom] now, nine times out of ten it will be a sermon disguised as a piece of entertainment."

"You have a minority of activists with incredible power in society who are treating their own extremist views and presenting them as though we've reached an established consensus in society, and it's not true."

"What the activists did to comedy insofar is they were expecting audiences to sit there, hear the joke, assess whether it was morally pure, and then laugh to endorse the point being made. And that's not how laughter works."

"If you're looking for a Disneyfied world of goodies and baddies, Shakespeare isn't for you. But this is precicely the world imagined by the high priests of critical social justice, those killjoys who have invaded the theatre industry and seek to deprive us of our cakes and ale. You're either in lockstep with every aspect of their doctrine, or you're on the wrong side of history. And when an ideology captures an organization, that organization ceases to function effectively and becomes a mere conduit for the propagation of the creed."

"When the fashionable beliefs of our time are imposed onto historical works of art, they are invariably denuded of much of their profundity."