Though you can barely move for Dapper Laughs’ grinning mug, and him chirping on about girls and massive gaping vaginas and jokes about his gargantuan penis. Or at least, criticisms of these behaviours and ITV2’s decision to keep legitimising them through the continuation of the TV show they gave him – behold, there’s more to know about the banter impresario.
When Dapper Laughs first got his very own TV show, Dapper Laughs: On The Pull, a comedy writer took umbrage to the way the channel was letting someone, just because he’s big on Vine, ‘shape the reality we live in’. In the piece, he said that, bar the runners who are probably too young and desperate for work to be too fallible, the production team had ‘have basically helped create a rapists’ almanac.’
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Dapper, real name Daniel O’Reilly, decided to, at a recent London gig, take this as a challenge, one that he could too gruesomely rise to. He barked at the audience, ‘I filmed six episodes, half an hour each, if it was a guide to rape, I would have done one five-minute episode, come on and go, “Oi oi, I’m Dapper Laughs, go down the shops, get some rope, bit of duct tape, rape the bitch, well done, see you later.”’
In the video, obtained by The Mirror, he then mock-advises the crowd, ‘You can’t rape women, no you can’t rape women,’ to which a man in the audience yells back, ‘Yes you can!’
After this, he turns to a female audience member and says, ‘She’s gagging for a rape. Yep, we’ll have a chat afterwards… Do you want to come backstage after? Bring two of your mates, you’ll need them.’
After many direct complains and calls for Dapper to have his programme to be removed by ITV2 – there are over 56,000 signatures on an e-petition – the company responded, ‘Comedy is subjective and we realise the content of the show might not be to everyone’s taste.’
‘We regret that any of our viewers were offended. However, as with all of our shows, the series content was carefully considered, complied and deemed suitable for broadcast.’
Dapper himself apologised, too, saying, ‘Some comedians push the boundaries in the name of entertainment. That means taking risks.’
‘But I think it’s important that if we overstep the mark and cause upset that we apologise. I would like to say sorry to those people who I have upset by my recent comments. I assure them that was not my intention.’
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But it all seems a little empty if this is the way he’s used to taking criticism. Plus, it’s not just his recent comments that have upset people, it’s his whole schtick of running up to women in the street and yelling, ‘She knows!’ Or telling them they’re ‘moist’. And, after this video has emerged, what’s to say he won’t just spin any criticism on its head to simply galvanise his brand of humour?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.