Prison paper rapped over Irish gags

A newspaper for prisoners has been branded ‘racist’ after printing two Irish jokes.

Campaigners said the gags in Inside Time were ‘shocking’ and could inflame anti-Irish prejudice in Britain’s jails.

The first gag was: A condemned man sat in the electric chair awaiting his execution, but there was a fault. They called in Paddy the electrician to try and sort out the problems. After two hours, he still hadn’t found it and told the Governor, ‘This thing is a bloody death-trap.’

The second was: An Irishman goes for a job on a building site. The boss asks, ‘Can you brew tea?’ Yes, he says. The boss then asks, ‘Can you drive a fork-lift?’ ‘Why, how big is the tea-pot?’

An Irish prisoner complained to the editor of the 46,000-circulation newspaper that the gags were ‘deeply offensive’ as they implied Irishmen ‘are basically stupid’, and asked if similar jokes would have been directed at black people or Muslims.

In reply to the complaint, the newspaper quoted Dave Allen’s line: ‘You might as well laugh at yourself once in a while – everyone else does.’

Conor McGinn of the Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas, a Catholic organisation based in London, said the jokes were ‘shocking enough’ but the response ‘absolutely disgraceful’.

‘They have said the jokes weren’t racist, but were unable to provide a single incidence of another ethnic minority community being targeted in this way,’ he said.

The newspaper says it never intended to cause offence.

Published: 17 Oct 2009