Bernard Manning Is Dead

Today the world is a poorer place. Well OK, maybe not poorer, but certainly less full of alarmingly offensive racist, sexist and homophobic old-fashioned comedians - comedian Bernard Manning died yesterday, age 76.

It's been reported that Bernard Manning died in a Manchester hospital yesterday after suffering kidney failure. A modest man who never stopped selling out shows even after TV banned him, Bernard Manning is thought to have left behind a fortune worth £10 million, an army of devoted followers and a stream of uncomfortably hate-fuelled  jokes about why lions lick their bottoms after eating black people. The whole world is in mourning over Bernard Manning's death today, with the exception of black people, Asians, the Jewish, women, gay people, East Asians and anyone else who found themselves on the receiving end of one of Bernard Manning's socially unacceptable diatribes. So just Jim Davidson, then.

In recent years, Bernard Manning became a kind of watchword for right-wing, old-fashioned racist comedy - the kind of comedy that kickstarted political correctness, from the days when you could unleash a volley of obviously racist material without having to apologise to Al Sharpton for it every time. But, although television banned him for his inflammatory views, Bernard Manning never stopped working - selling out working men's clubs, making Madonna laugh at chefs' birthday parties and, in one unfortunate incident, getting booked to perform for the BNP - although Bernard Manning denied this in typical fashion:

"It's a lot of bollocks. I don't know where I'm working. Speak to my agent. I don't know about any BNP nonsense. I would not do it anyway. Do you think I'm fucking barmy?"

But now Bernard Manning has died of kidney failure, age 76. The Times reports:

Bernard Manning, the old-school club comic who refused to acknowledge that his material was racist, died yesterday aged 76…  Frank Carson, a fellow comic and friend, told the BBC News website: “He was a wonderful man. If I had to write his gravestone I’d put, ‘Here lies Bernard Manning, comedian, who died 76 years old.’ Underneath that I’d put, ‘What a pity, he had a booking next week’.”

Throughout his life, Bernard Manning never accepted that his material - such as the joke about dropping 1,000 people from Pakistan into Belfast to give everyone some real 'Troubles' - was offensive, constantly pointing out that he was a comedian and that he 'took the mickey' out of everyone. Certainly his life off the stage was markedly different to his comedy persona - before he died, Bernard Manning was a ceaseless charity worker and longtime Mother Teresa fan who claimed that his onstage style was little more than an act and often broke into teary-eyed speeches about homeless children and dead members of his family during his act, apparently in an attempt to counter these accusations.

Whether it was an act, or whether Bernard Manning really did believe in the offensive jokes he was telling, is something we'll never know now that he's dead. But, even though in his life he caused genuine hurt to many individuals and groups, let's remember Bernard Manning in the best way possible - as an overweight, confused old man singing the hits of The Smiths…

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Bernard Manning, Banned But Never Silenced, Dies At 76 - The Times