Dapper Laughs Is Dead: Comedian Daniel O'Reilly Vows Never To Perform As The Character Again

Dapper Laughs, the controversial comedy character, has been killed off by his creater Daniel O'Reilly.

Daniel appeared on BBC Newsnight to apologise for the offence he had caused with lines like "she's gagging for a rape" and "it's only sexual harassment if she's more attractive than you."

Speaking to Emily Maitlis on the evening broadcast, Daniel said: "It's not setting a good example."

"This morning I woke up and decided that I don't want to carry on with Dapper Laughs...Dapper Laughs is gone," he continued.

However, as Emily continued her line of questioning, Daniel's motivation for discontinuing the character was called into question.

As the interview went on, it seemed more and more like the comedian had only made the decision to kill Dapper because he was feeling victimised by the negative attention he'd been getting.

"It has completely ruined everything that is going on with me as a comedian," Daniel said, seemingly blaming "the media" for all their recent critiques of his controversial act.

So is Daniel O'Reilly missing the point?

Well, we hope not, but there is something about his contrition that doesn't ring true.

He spends the first part of the interview denouncing the character, and claiming that he didn't for a second imagine that people would take any of what Dapper Laughs said seriously.

But as interviewer Emily rightly points out, Daniel once called Dapper an "extension of [himself]" and that the character "allows him to do things he wouldn't ordinarily do himself."

Hmm...

Ideally, in his interview for Newsnight, Daniel O'Reilly would have done more to acknowledge the many women (and men) who have felt appalled and upset by a character that seemed to be endorsing, reinforcing and normalising the violence and abuse that have been exacted upon them.

ITV2 Cancels Show

The interview came just after it was announced that Dapper Laughs: On The Pull , a television series, had been cancelled by the network ITV2, following furied criticism on social media, including a petition signed by over 60,000 people.

Some said that people shouldn't take the act so seriously, as it is designed to parody 'lad culture', not to endorse it.

So let's take a look at a few different points of view.

Who Is Dapper Laughs?

Dapper Laughs is a character, created by comedian Daniel O'Reilly.

In much the same way that Sacha Baron Cohen assumes the roles of dictators and feckless fashion journalists in order to draw attention to their ridiculous and often detestable behaviour, so Daniel O'Reilly claims his aim is to embody the worst kind of misogynist, in order to "take the p*ss out of lad culture."

This means his act mostly focuses on "pulling birds" and touching boobs and "fanny".

Dapper Laughs became a hit when O'Reilly used short-video platform Vine to post a series of comedy clips on Twitter and elsewhere, largely full of bad chat up lines.

After a few rounds on the comedy circuit and signs of a large social media following, he was picked up by ITV2, who gave him his own show On The Pull, designed to attract a younger, vlog-loving audience.

Unsavoury Words

Dapper Laughs, the character, ranges from a bit unsavoury, to downright outrageous.

Some of his lighter comedy picks up on the silly and uninformed, but relatively innocuous notion among young boys, that every woman is looking for sex and that they themselves are infinitely sexy.

Some of his more controversial lines, though, are deplorable.

Lee Kern of the Huffington Post described it succinctly as a “woeful, misogynistic celebration of banter-based cretinism that is sadly having a renaissance among the confused, the intellectually frightened and the simpleton."

Awfully, this 'cretinism' endorses rape threats and sexual harassment.

See below some screen grabs of tweets that Dapper Laughs' team has since deleted:

The Big Problem

There is a case to be made about unjust dismissal, based on the idea that Dapper Laughs is meant to be a parody and that his show On The Pull does not feature the most controversial elements of his comedy.

But it's a case that doesn't really hold up.

The biggest issue is that, while Daniel O'Reilly claims to be "taking the p*ss", many people seem to have missed that memo.

Dapper Laughs, in terms of the viewer's perception, is rarely the butt of his own jokes.

Many of his social media following take his endorsement of misogyny and rape culture on face value.

Which means that, far from ridiculing the worst behaviour of a particular type of person, as Baron Cohen does, he actually ends up endorsing a nasty sexism and culture of abuse that is still horribly mainstream.

So Was It Right To Cancel His Show?

In a word, yes.

Regardless of where you're saying it or how you think you're coming across, the world is absolutely not ready to universally 'take a joke' when you're using lines such as:

“Just show her your penis; if she cries, she’s just playing hard to get."

or

"She's gagging for a rape...Do you want to come backstage after? Bring two of your mates, you'll need them," as he is reported to have said during one of his live shows.

Domestic violence, rape culture and shameless misogyny is still too widely present in society for this to be understood as a the parody it is apparently supposed to be.

People are upset at scenes that hit alarmingly close to home and ITV2 cannot be seen to endorse the character any longer.

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What do you think? Let us know in the comments!