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Richard Hammond has shared his stance on the idea of erasing or cancelling older TV series and movies that may not be deemed politically correct by today’s standards.
Just days after he publicly defended Jeremy Clarkson for the authenticity of his farming series, the former Top Gear took to his podcast to defend the need to keep historical material alive – no matter how un-PC.
Alongside his podcast co-host and daughter Izzy and their guest, trans comedian Jen Ives, the trio got into a heated debate about where historic comedy stands in today’s world and how it should be approached.
The debate began when discussing Ives’s view on the matter and the classic comedy The Young Ones was brought up into the conversation.
“It is good,” Ives said of the sitcom. “It’s just programmes like that, they probably influenced and moulded a lot of people’s sense of who they were. A lot of people get very personal about their interests and to a lot of people the sense of humour they have is part of who they are.”
Hammond then cut in to ask: “Because comedy is so often sort of at the cutting edge of what’s acceptable, it’s dancing around (that line) and sometimes it’s standing the wrong side of the line but what it’s actually doing is pointing back at the line and emphasising the importance of it. That’s critical.
Richard Hammond and his daughter Izzy host their own podcast
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“If people are willfully taking a role in saying, ‘I don’t think this is (funny) but isn’t it funny if somebody does?’ Because it’s there at the front, should it have a sell-by date after which it’s strictly not seen? Should it be scrapped, should it disappear?”
Hammond then referred back to the comedies of the 70s and 80s which he claimed “weren’t funny anymore” before adding: “It’s almost funny we used to find it funny.”
Ives responded: “Well no, personally I think the problem with erasing those kind of things… it gives the people who made those things or the companies who put out those things a get-out-of-jail-free card as if it never happened.
“It’s like Disney with Song of the South… it was a film that they made and it’s set in plantation just after the (US) Civil War and it has elements to it which are really racist and Disney has like really buried it as a film, you can’t buy it anymore. We can’t let Disney get off scot-free with that -“
Hammond then interrupted Ives following the suggestion that Disney should reprimanded nowadays for a film made in 1946.
He argued: “Wait a minute. Everything I watched in my youth, pretty much all of it – when I say I wouldn’t find it funny now… I actually mean I wouldn’t find it funny because we’ve moved on.
“But nobody would make that now, back then we did because we were changing,” Hammond suggested, prompting Ives to query: “So are you asking me if we should continue making those things?”
The 54-year-old stood firm: “No! I’m saying to beast Disney for making something that in context was from a different time – or whoever made It Ain’t Half Hot Mum and various other frankly overtly racist series – clearly they shouldn’t be celebrated (and) we wouldn’t watch them to find them funny because you wouldn’t find them funny.
“But I think as commentary, as illustrators of, ‘Whoa’… we don’t want to go back there and think that again. I wouldn’t want to beast the producers of it because I used to laugh at it so how can I beast the producers of it?”
“There’s a difference between beasting and holding (people) accountable,” Ives argued back but Hammond was unwavering: “But they’re not accountable because it’s a different (time). You can’t take revenge for something that at the time wasn’t a crime.”
Richard Hammond is against cancelling comedy-makers retrospectively
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Ives clarified: “It’s not revenge, it’s not revenge – I think that’s too overdramatic. It’s just let’s not pretend that this didn’t happen.”
Hammond’s daughter then waded into the debate to share her thoughts as she chimed: “It’s accountability. I think it’s not accusatory, it’s saying what you did there you didn’t think it was wrong but you need to understand now that’s not great and that is wrong.”
The debate drew to a close with Ives suggesting older materials should come with a trigger warning, using animated show Tom and Jerry as an example, before Hammond signed off by insisting: “We need to preserve (old comedies) really to know how far we’ve come.”
It’s not the first time the Hammonds’ podcast, Who We Are Now, has been the platform for discussions about modern-day issues such as the cancel culture war or toxic masculinity debates.
Last month, James May appeared on the podcast to discuss his career in the spotlight amid ever-changing attitudes.
During their discussion, May claimed “older white blokes” tend to be “written off” nowadays due to preconceptions about toxic masculinity.
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