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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Brian Logan

What’s funny, what’s offensive? And are Mitchell and Webb comedy villains now?

David Mitchell and Robert Webb on stage during Amnesty International’s Secret Policeman’s Ball at the Royal Albert Hall, London, October 2008.
David Mitchell and Robert Webb on stage during Amnesty International’s Secret Policeman’s Ball at the Royal Albert Hall, London, October 2008. Photograph: Ian West/PA Wire/PA Photos

“Are we the baddies?”, asked the comedy double act Mitchell and Webb in their most famous sketch, in which two uniformed SS officers look one another up and down and arrive at that inescapable conclusion. And lo, it turns out they are, if this week’s news about the supposed offensiveness of the duo’s back catalogue is to be believed.

Their newfound unpalatability made headlines last Monday, when 11 of the pair’s sketches were pulled from the rerelease of That Mitchell and Webb Look on iPlayer to mark its 20th anniversary – a move that led to loud condemnation from the keyboard cavalry in Britain’s never-ending, and never much fun, culture war.

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