The Funny Side of Cancellation

Douglas is cancelledthe new ITV drama series, should come with a warning – for me, anyway. Watching it reminded me of my cancellation six years ago, a cancellation I found so traumatic that I lost five pounds. True, the middle-aged white man at the centre of this drama (Hugh Bonneville) only has one job to lose – he’s a TV presenter – while I’ve lost five. But otherwise, the similarities are uncanny. Has the author, Steven Moffat, read the 5,000-word article I wrote about my experience? Or do all cancellations follow the same pattern?

Douglas’ trial begins when someone on Twitter claims to have heard him tell a sexist joke at a wedding. They don’t say what the joke was, and he was drunk at the time so he doesn’t remember it, but everyone assumes the worst and his career is soon in jeopardy. Soon the joke is being described by those trying to help him, like his agent, as not only sexist but misogynistic, forcing Douglas to correct them: “That was sexist, for God’s sake!” Needless to say, this doesn’t help matters—or so I found out. One of my sins was making a sexist joke and it was turned into something much worse. Left-wing women took to Twitter to demand my firing, then added #MeToo, as if I were morally indistinguishable from Harvey Weinstein. Protesting that I hadn’t raped anyone did nothing to improve things.

Like me, Douglas thinks this is just a tempest in a teacup and that the media circus will soon move on. But the opposite is happening: a terrible symbiosis is occurring between social media and print media, each amplifying what the other says in a kind of reverse echo chamber effect, where each time an allegation bounces back and forth between the two, it gets louder. What Douglas didn’t anticipate is the sheer joy people take in tearing someone down. They revel in their moral outrage and feverishly look for other things that might “offend” them. The excuse is that certain words or jokes “harm” “minorities.” These same Head Prefects then flood social media with all the inappropriate things you said, making it clear that their outrage is performative, because if they genuinely thought your words were causing harm, they wouldn’t be shouting them from the rooftops.

In the midst of this assassination attempt, Douglas is due to appear at the Hay Festival, where he is to be interviewed on stage about his life and career. He worries whether the joke will be made, but at least the interviewer is the empathetic type like Kate Garraway. Then, to his horror, she is replaced by Emily Maitlis. At this point, I thought the author must have considered my cancellation because I too was approached by the BBC’s Grand Inquisitor and struggled with whether to go through with it, as Douglas does. This was before she eviscerated Prince Andrew on Newsnightso it wasn’t a given that it was for him. I was about to say yes when Caroline – like me, Douglas has a sensible wife – brought me back to my senses. (“Are you crazy?” etc.)

I should say, if it’s not already obvious, that Douglas is cancelled This is very funny. Actually, I don’t think Moffat just read my article. He researched the subject so thoroughly that anyone who has been through one of these ordeals will feel the same way: “Oh my God, this is all about me.” But what makes this such a good read – for Cancelled Club members, anyway – is that Moffat is on Douglas’s side. OK, he’s a bit of a buffoon, but he doesn’t deserve to lose everything because he told a sexist joke.

Moffat captures a point that struck me at the time, which is that there is something comical about how disproportionate it is for someone to be cancelled for using hurtful words. In my case, it played out with a horrible sense of inevitability, as if the universe had suddenly turned mean, and everything I did to try to appease the gods—like apologizing—only made things worse. Like all good comedies, it had the same structure as a tragedy, but the only thing at stake was my self-esteem. Yes, there were also the five jobs and the question of how I was going to pay my mortgage, but the heart of the story was a rather vain and conceited man being humiliated, so it was essentially funny. At least it would have been if it had happened to anyone else.

I remember comforting myself with the thought that I was being given excellent material for a television series and I took a lot of notes, thinking that I would write it up when the dust had settled. Moffat beat me to it and did a very good job.