Following an e-petition of over 68,000 signatures ('Cancel* Dapper Laughs: On The Pull* on ITV') and the emergence of a video where Dapper Laughs takes criticism of his show as a 'rapist's almanac' as an opportunity to bark 'how-to' rape tips at his fans, ITV2 has dropped the mockney Vine star.
The channel told BBC Newsbeat that it will not be commissioning a second series of his ITV2 show, because of what happened* outside* of the show: 'We have given careful thought to the recent criticism of the character Dapper Laughs, which has focused on his activities outside of the ITV2 programme. We have taken the decision that we will not be considering this show for a second series.'
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Dapper's schtick of going up to women and yelling 'she knows' – when she doesn't, so everyone is on the joke but not her – or telling her she's 'moist' or generally making jokes about women's vaginas wasn't what got him dropped. Neither was his 'comedy' Christmas album where he said homeless people stink of shit. (FYI, he said it was a lol for charity, Shelter refused all donations from his album).
Nor was it his behaviour when two young female journalists took him on for saying homeless people smelled of shit (he goaded his hundreds of thousands into flinging abuse at them). No, what got him dropped was the revelation of a video where he shows just how badly he takes criticism by giving a step-by-step guide on how to rape a woman before saying that a woman in the audience is 'gagging for a rape.'
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Like, fair enough, that's a tipping point, but to be fair, we've seen a few tipping points over the past week, even while ITV2 stood by their new upstart by claiming 'comedy is subjective.'
Though much of Dapper's bad behaviour might have been outside ITV2, what gave him undue prominence and legitimacy in the first place? Having his own TV show. It's totally great that he's no longer going to fill our airwaves with this aggressive mock-ironic offensiveness (well, unless Channel 5 want to pick him up – for the record, they don't seem to be considering it).
However, in the fall-out of this media frenzy, it's also perhaps worth remembering that Dapper (real name Daniel O'Reilly) is a real person, not an idiot carved out of shit, and that trolling of him is kind of missing the point; he's not a victim, let's not give him any ammunition to play that card.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.