It’s quite extraordinary, given how offensive some of their content is, what the BBC chooses to apologise for. Invite a fascist on flagship programming; proud commitment to free speech. Let a comedian tell a joke about appalling human rights violations; a step too far.

So three cheers for Frankie Boyle for not just objecting, in eloquent and passionate terms, but using the opportunity to raise the plite of the Palestinian people.

In case you missed it, the jokes in question are: ‘I’ve been studying Israeli Army Martial Arts. I now know 16 ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back. People think that the Middle East is very complex but I have an analogy that sums it up quite well. If you imagine that Palestine is a big cake, well…that cake is being punched to pieces by a very angry Jew.’

The situation in Palestine seems to be, in essence, apartheid. I grew up with the anti apartheid thing being a huge focus of debate. It really seemed to matter to everybody that other human beings were being treated in that way. We didn’t just talk about it, we did things, I remember boycotts and marches and demos all being held because we couldn’t bear that people were being treated like that.

According to a little page-filler in the back of today’s Guardian, sales of tickets to comedy gigs have risen dramatically recently   “luring in customers with affordable tickets and topical stand-up routines on the economic downturn.”  It’s a cheap night out, the paper suggests, and the pickings are ripe for a new generation of angry young men to come forth and vent the collective fury of the ineloquent and the inactive alike.  But something is missing.

There is – and I say this with a fair degree of self-assured self-importance – a wealth of very funny comedians around at the moment.  In fact, I would even go as far as to say that, in terms of mainstream entertainment, the standard of British comedy is as good today is has ever been.  Mark Watson and Michael McIntryre, to name but two, are exceptionally funny observational comedians who deliver consistently likeable and new material on an almost weekly basis.  On the small screen, The Inbetweeners is an hilarious ode to youth – closing a decade that has already bore witness to The Office, Peep Show and 15 Storey’s High, with snobbery being the only reason not to utter these in the same sentence as Black Adder and Monty Python.

But let’s return to stand up for the moment – truly the finest and foremost marker of what can undoubtedly be one of the noblest of art forms.  What are Watson’s and McIntyre’s jokes about?  A pigeon flying into the back of a man’s head at Liverpool Street train station in Waton’s case, and a man’s draw full of outdated foreign currency in the latter’s.  So, where’s the beef?  Where is the Ben Elton of our generation?  Critics of the Iraq War are forced to simply rewatch Bill Hicks ever ponient lines from two decades before.

It is a sad indictment of our time that the closest we have to hard-hitting comedy in the semi-mainstream today is Mock the Week’s Frankie Boyle.  Undoubtedly a gifted and cutting comedian – “Have you heard that the Spice Girls are reforming?  The only way I ever want to see Geri Halliwell draped in a Union Jack again is if she dies in battle” – he is, all the same, just a tad trivial and often purile.  And even he is on a leash.

But not that of the BBC, I would venture.  Rather, it is the choking leash of public indifference.  Could it be that, with the mediocrity of our current age and our tired adherence to this unenfranchising system of ‘consensus based politics’, so too has such woe come to betide stand up comedy?  Oh, how I long for a George Carlin, Lenny Bruce or young Chris Rock for today… someone to help us question that which we are too tired to have thought about ourselves.  Comedians who do not just satirise and mock the world as they find it, but offered an alternative vision as well.  Our current breed, by stark contrast, sneer without care or consistency.  The result: a banal hybrid of gaffs about Peter Andre and Jordan, and a reliance on swearing and foul imagery as end in itself, so as to maintain a veneer of being ‘edgy’.

I know what some will say: “for good comedy, you need to go to the clubs mate, not sit in front of the television”.  And that may be so.  But today I fear that even our greatest comedy venues have become bastions of mediocrity.  And I have been to a few.  Even The Comedy Store, on Oxendon Street, lest we forget was the place that first brought us Eddie Izzard and the alternative comedy boom that accompanied Thatcherism and the economic downturn of the 1980s.  Today, it is frowned upon to even make a witty heckle.

Play it safe.  Make your money.  Bums on seats.  Don’t offend anyone.

Humour is, rightly, the end point of all good stand-up comedians.  Hicks and his ilk would always maintain that they were humourist first and satirist second.  But as we approach a dank, dark winter of channel flicking and inevitable social unrest, somebody – please – step forward and grab this momentous opportunity by the horns.  You will only be saying what we are all thinking: some of us just haven’t realised we wanted to hear it until now. And it could go a long way towards changing things, as have many of the greatest artists before you.

Guest post by Jon Small

The latest character from Sacha Baron Cohen’s entourage of grotesques to hit the big screen is Brüno, the gay-as-a-lamp-post presenter of Austria’s number one fashion show, Funkyzeit. Brüno began life as a minor character in Baron Cohen’s television shows for Paramount Comedy and Channel 4’s Da Ali G Show. As with the Borat film in 2006, Brüno’s transition from the small to the big screen has given Baron Cohen and his team of writers (including The Day Today’s Peter Baynham) an opportunity to widen and deepen the character’s satirical reach from the absurd skits and fake interviews which characterise the TV appearances to a sustained assault on good taste and mediocrity wherever they are found.

Borat is a tough act to follow, and some elements of Brüno will seem remarkably familiar. This film’s “plot” also centres on a peculiar foreigner who travels to the USA, engaging on a somewhat pointless quest. The film has the same story arc as Borat, and we even find some of the same scenes repeated almost verbatim, such as when Brüno, abandoned by his only friend, finds himself destitute and alone and has a sudden moment of self revelation: he must become straight! The plot is of course merely incidental, it’s simply an excuse to string together a series of carefully edited encounters with minor celebrities, PR gurus and ordinary people. Brüno’s faux-naivety acts as a tool to expose the prejudices and mediocrity of mainstream America.

The targets for Sacha Baron Cohen’s satire in Brüno are varied. Starting off in Brüno’s native environment of high fashion, the opening of the film reprises the TV series’ attacks on that absurdly shallow and self-important world. But a satire directed entirely against catwalk fashionistas would be thin indeed, and this was one of the limitations of Brüno’s character in Da Ali G Show: the fashion world is self-parodying and is in little need of even more comedic absurdity than can already be seen in haute couture and the journalism industry that surrounds it. Thankfully, then, after a faux pas involving a velcro suit, Brüno is sacked from his role as presenter of Funkyzeit and travels to America to seek global fame. Cue a series of encounters with members of the fame industry in LA: Brüno meets a high-power celebrity agent and two clueless valley-girl PR consultants. These can’t string together a coherent sentence and try to decide which would be the best cause to adopt in order for a newcomer to make a name for himself: “global warming is big these days,” “oh, fantastisch!”

Along with vapid celebrity culture, Brüno also tackles politics. He briefly travels to Israel and attempts to solve the Palestine question, in a parody of empty-headed celebrity meddling in the world of “issues”. Brüno brings together a former Mossad agent and a Palestinian politician, making huge advances towards peace in the Middle East by getting them to agree that hummus is actually a good thing. Sacha Baron Cohen even manages to interview a (genuine) member of the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade terrorist organisation, telling him that “King Osama looks like a dirty wizard,” demonstrating not only his own bravado but the dexterous verbal wit that marks the script’s intelligent humour. Most of the film’s subjects are either unsuspecting or actively hostile, and Brüno’s raison d’etre is to be abused and thrown out, which Baron Cohen pulls off with fearless disregard for his personal safety.

Half the fun is trying to guess which of the situations Brüno finds himself in are set ups and which are genuine unscripted encounters. As with Borat, there is a mix of both: it is part carefully-written and skilfully executed physical comedy and planned improvisation, and part genuinely dangerous and edgy media pranksterism. The interview with ex-Presidential candidate Ron Paul that turns into an attempt to make a celebrity sex tape is the latter, with an obviously shocked and flustered Paul storming out, declaring that the man is “as queer as blazes.” (Brüno apparently thought he was RuPaul, an easy mistake to make.) There is of course an element of cruelty in Sacha Baron Cohen’s pranks, but most of the people he chooses as the butt of his jokes are putting themselves in the public spotlight, or worse, declaring themselves authorities on their chosen subject. As such, puncturing their self-regard is fair game.

Those few subjects who respond with humour and largesse come off well, though Brüno keeps on pushing until he gets a response. One aspect of Borat which made me slightly uneasy was the inclusion of so many ordinary people who, while hilariously stupid, were nonetheless unsuspecting, and revealed nothing more than their own stupidity. The satire in Brüno is more sharply focused, with more minor celebrities and self-declared experts being lampooned. Those ‘ordinary’ members of the public who become the target of Baron Cohen’s penetrating derision in this film often turn out to be genuinely nasty pieces of work rather than simply dim.

The Alabama hunters with whom Brüno spends a night in order to overcome his gayness respond at first with strained good humour and some great comebacks, but when confronted by a fully nude Sacha Baron Cohen in the middle of the night (and Sacha is an impressively large man), they are pushed beyond breaking point. The satire is not consistently focused though, and some elements descend into what appears to be simply baiting for the sake of response. The studio audience of Richard Bey’s chat show may be homophobic and crass, but showing them Brüno’s adopted African baby being photographed with a swarm of bees or present at a gay orgy seems to be an attempt simply to enrage with no purpose other than to provoke an emotive reaction. What impresses about Sacha Baron Cohen’s humour is that it is consistently at the edge of what is acceptable, it is never comfortable, predictable or safe: this kind of comedy has to be dangerous, it has to make you cringe. Sometimes this film misses its target, but more often than not it hits it squarely between the eyes.

Criticisms of Baron Cohen’s approach are levelled quickly and loudly by those on all sides who miss the point he is trying to make. When Borat came out we were earnestly warned about the dangers of stereotyping and belittling the population of Kazakhstan, Borat’s home country. But anyone who regards the surreal representation of Borat’s village with its cast of clinically insane misfits and inbreds, and its annual “Running of the Jew” parade as a belittling stereotype has fallen right into the bear trap set by the satirist. Stereotypes have to be at least partly accurate, and this one is so absurd that to be offended by it demonstrates your own prejudice. The characters of Ali G, Borat and Brüno act as magnifying mirrors to the minds and personalities of those they interview, and of those who watch. Your response to these creations reveals your own assumptions, and we’re all tricked into revealing more about ourselves than we think. That’s where the genius of these characters lies, and it is the mark of successful and incisive satire. Brüno has quickly attracted the criticism that Baron Cohen’s creation presents a harmful gay stereotype: an image of mindless camp tastelessness. But it is precisely this lampoon which acts as possibly the sharpest tool of the film’s satire, revealing unthinking and viscerally prejudiced responses and attitudes towards homosexuality. What some seem happy to take as being broadly representative of homosexuality is in fact simply representative of crass stupidity, regardless of sexual orientation. Sacha Baron Cohen has a knack of pinpointing the small-minded assumptions of those who think they’re being politically correct.

Those who criticise this film for its supposed detraction of homosexuality utterly miss the point. Brüno uses his flamboyant and shameless gayness to reveal what are often aggressively homophobic responses from his interviewees. The deep south Christian “gay converters” and the Westboro Baptist Church’s “God Hates Fags” picket line are prime targets for Sacha Baron Cohen’s attack on prejudice, small mindedness and ignorance. Brüno telling the rather effete gay converter that he has “blow job lips” and becoming physically entangled with the God Hates Fags brigade while in flagrante, dressed in full bondage gear are not only hilarious but important and damning social criticism. At its best this film is true satire: an attempt to puncture and deride stupidity and prejudice. By confronting these bigots with their own worst nightmare Baron Cohen sometimes reveals the intriguing dichotomy at the heart of homophobia: the audience for the cage fight at the end of the film are eager to shout so loudly about their heterosexuality that you wonder exactly what they’re trying to hide. Brüno’s beautifully choreographed fight with his personal assistant turns into a tender scene of homosexual intimacy right before the eyes of the baying crowd, and he is confronted by an aggressive mob of individuals who can’t decide whether to cry or do him physical harm. The best comedy challenges and disrupts expectations, and this film is full of surprises and shocking absurdity; quite an achievement after Borat, which this film matches or betters. This is barbed satire with no tolerance for prejudice and ignorance. It’s a joy to watch because while the satire is pitiless, Baron Cohen’s insightful, intelligent and generous humanism always shines through. It’s funny as hell, too.