James Delingpole is doing everything he can to fight this awful ailment:
Today I am launching an appeal on behalf of a former British comedian called Robert Webb.
Unless you live in the UK you probably won’t have heard of him. But in his day he was very funny – first as part of the double act Mitchell and Webb, later in the even funnier series Peep Show (which really was much better than the travesty of a U.S. remake, honest).
Anyway, sadly, those days of being funny are long behind him. Poor Webb has fallen victim to a disease which has ravaged the global comedic community so cruelly and on such a scale that it could probably provide Tony Kushner with enough material to write another Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
This disease comes in several ugly mutations.
There’s the basic form – Cleese’s Disease – where you started out funny but you haven’t been for years because you now take yourself far too seriously.
There’s Schumer-Degeneres Syndrome, where you probably weren’t that funny to start with but you’re definitely even less funny now that you’ve become obsessed with hating your own white privilege.
There’s Linehan Complex, where your youthful frivolity has mutated into hideous arrogance and bitterness and extreme self-righteousness which leads you to lash out viciously on social media at anyone who doesn’t share your impeccably woke SJW politics.
Robert Webb, poor chap, has managed to contract all three variants of the disease at once.
