Enemy of the People

Sunday Times News Review, 9th. January, 2000

"One of the most disappointing aspects of the millennium celebrations - and let's fact it, competition for this accolade is pretty stiff - was Stephen Fry's 10-minute stand-up routine at the dome. His opening was in dubious taste, containing as it did the phrase 'lades, stroke, gentleman, stroke, girls, and of course, stroke boys,' delivered with heavy innuendo. Having set the tone in this way, he later complained that he did not know by which orifice he should enter the body zone and teased that he would like to 'gobble up' the musician Jools Holland. (Fry, incidentally, would think the phrase 'his opening was in dubious taste' was not criticism, but just the sort of joke that would go down well on an occasion like this.)"

"Orifices and the uncomfortable sexuality of adolescent boys: can Fry, who was one of the stars of 1980s comedy, really have become a tweedy version of Julian Clary?"

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