Joe Lycett and the trouble with wokescreening

The word ‘wokescreen’ is (like its naughty older sibling, the carelessly carbon-producing smokescreen), an alibi which hides the truth about a nefarious action. But what marks it out from old-fashioned hypocrisy is that – rather than being a mere rogue – the wokescreener poses as a social justice hero, looking down from a great height at the great unwoked. From the Sussexes’ private planes to Justin Trudeau’s blackface antics, the wokescreen is a fine example of modern Magical Thinking – if you identify as good, you can then be bad to your sanctimonious little heart’s content.

A prime example is the comedian Joe Lycett who – having condemned David Beckham for pocketing £150 million to be the ‘face’ of homophobic hellhole Qatar – was recently revealed to have performed not only in Qatar, but to have done a string of stand-ups in such bastions of equality as Dubai and Abu Dhabi.