Smash hit

Atkinson is surely right to point out that this bill is unfair. For it will be ordinary folk, not swells like him, who will have their collars felt. “The view will be ‘If you are in the cast of Blackadder you get away with it because it is a programme legislators enjoy’. I sang a song called I Hate the French and was never prosecuted, nor was Jim Davidson. They knew he could hire fat lawyers. It will be the man in the pub or writing the thesis at the University of East Anglia who will be prosecuted.”

Atkinson says if he does write and perform a sketch to tempt a prosecution “one should not do so out of spite. But the prosecution would be aware that if successful they would create a benchmark. This is about creating an intimidating and potentially stifling climate”. Journalists of the more analytical kind will be deeply affected. “Not,” he adds dryly, “the David Beckham correspondents who are unlikely to be overly concerned.”

After he first voiced opposition, when the bill was mooted in 2001, Fiona Mactaggart, a Home Office minister, called him in with Salman Rushdie: “He successfully dominated the meeting but I wasn’t convinced by the minister at all: she was pleasant but did not want to listen. Her aim was to pacify us.”

In defence of ministers he says Islamic fundamentalists might have pushed for even stronger wording. “So we don’t know how much the bill might represent the third way. And now yet another batch of anti-terror legislation is on its way through, so the government is effectively saying to Muslims, ‘You might be hounded a little bit so here is a sweetener’.”

Atkinson says that unlike “root and branch” opponents he would settle for an amendment on Tuesday: this would still allow one to “abuse” and “insult” religions as long as one wasn’t “threatening” the faithful. It seems a sensible compromise. For otherwise, as Atkinson says, pretty well anything in danger of being thought funny or rude could be deemed illegal, such as the old Not the Nine O’Clock News sketch that showed a mosque of praying Muslims as a newscaster intoned: “The hunt continues for the ayatollah’s contact lenses.”

Does Atkinson see a clash of civilisations; is Islam, as some liberal adherents admit, fundamentally aggressive? “I simply don’t know enough about it to say, but I do know you should be allowed to say Islam is aggressive.”

He likes to come over as an ingénue to avoid controversy, but Atkinson is no dimbo: he was on his second degree when he met his friend and comic collaborator Richard Curtis, the scriptwriter, at Oxford. Indeed, his theatrical friends clearly found him geekishly clever. Fry has said: “It is as if God had an extra jar of comic talent and, for a joke, gave it to a nerdy, anoraked northern chemist.”

But cleverness fails him when it comes to predicting how the global culture clash will resolve itself. “I don’t know, Jasper, I’m not a futurologist, though I did meet one last week. He is paid to predict that in years to come we won’t use toothpaste, and of course he will have retired long before everyone’s teeth fall out.” Hah! You almost forget you are talking to a comedian.

But back to his theme: “If the complaint is that Muslims are insulted by freedom of expression, I think that is tough. But I don’t think Muslims are trying to make us like Saudi Arabia. Freedom of speech is not the preserve of white Anglicans and Muslims can benefit from it too. If you were in Iran protesting against the Iran-Iraq war you would have had your work cut out.”

He wants to “reduce people’s susceptibility to offence”. This is vital: “Jokes are exaggerated truths.” And I just thought they made us laugh. Still, if he is right it might explain why an Atkinson speech can carry such force.