But he calls it 'a sad old day'

Jim Davidson has vowed never to make a joke about black people again.

But he doesn't appear entirely happy about the decision, saying it was a 'sad old day'.

The comic is notorious for the 'Chalky' character he evoked for his stand-up routines in his 1970s heyday using an exaggerated West Indian accent.

And in a new video in response to the Black Lives Matter protests and the cancellation of many comedy shows using blackface, the 66-year-old comic lamented: 'I can't do impressions of Frank Bruno or Ian Wright? That's racist is it? But I can do Sven-Göran Eriksson?'

But the comic appeared to signal that he wanted to withdraw from being the whipping boy those protesting racially-based comedy.

'I'm the antichrist, aren't I?,' he said in a video message on his YouTube channel, recorded in front of a Falklands Islands flag and which has already been viewed more than 165,000 times.

'But I'm here to tell you now as a person who's been accused of various things. I will now never, ever do jokes about black people again, OK?

'I'm not going to get on my knee, and I'm not going to go ever black person I see, "hail you". I'm not going to apologise for the past; the past was the past.

'[But] the intent was not to insult. It was to make people laugh. So I will never ever do a joke about a black person again. I don't want to be part of a thing. I don't want to look at all the lefty newspapers making up bollocks about it. Let's all try live in harmony'

'I don't know what these protesters want so I'll just bug out. So take me out of the frame. You've got what you want. That nasty Jim Davidson will never, ever engage in telling black jokes. So goodbye you YouTubers on this sad old day.'

However fans need not worry that Davidson has suddenly become woke.

The comic has set up a £4-a-month subscription service for fans to watch his video rants on the issues of the day.

In recent videos, he lambasts he 'lefty-Stasi media' and 'millennial snowflake do-gooders' and pleads: 'Are we really going to let people tear OUR statues down?' as he evoked the spirit of the Normandy landings.

Davidson has also called the Black Lives Matter protesters 'pondlife' and 'fucking stupid' for breaking lockdown and putting lives at risk from Covid-19, and said of the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, which sparked the campaign: 'I don't look at it as a black man being killed by a white cop. I look at it as a bad cop.'

And he can't help himself but raise an eyebrow when he mentions the name of the Met's commander for frontline policing, Bas Javid, three minutes into the video vowing not to make any more black jokes.

Davidson - who once released a reggae version of White Christmas affecting the Jamaican accent - was criticised for his 'crude racist jokes' even in the 1970s.

He previously said he stopped doing his Chalky voice not out of political correctness, 'but [because] you rarely hear West Indian accents now'.

Published: 18 Jun 2020