Pat Condell 'Hard? I'm not hard. But I won't flatter fuckwits'
Pat Condell: interview
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By Malcolm Hay
Posted: Fri Nov 3 2006 -
Time Out meets Pat Condell, who doesn‘t respect your beliefs and doesn‘t care if you‘re offended
Pat Condell doesn’t much care for any form of religion. ‘I’m not saying it doesn’t have its uses,’ he declares. ‘Personally, I turn to it whenever I want my intelligence insulted.’ He particularly dislikes what he calls ‘God’s little helpers’, the ones who ‘take it upon themselves to police the rest of us on His behalf’. He’s even sceptical about so-called religious moderates. ‘They’ve helped to nurture extremism by tolerating it in their midst and by constantly demanding respect for faith-based opinion.’
The media, Condell says, give airtime to ‘lunatics like Christian Voice’ whenever there’s a storm in a teacup like the arguments over ‘Jerry Springer: the Opera’. ‘Or, when Muslims erupt in fury over nothing, as with the recent veil nonsense, the BBC invites some hate-mongering fuckwit who represents nobody to speak for all the Muslims in Britain.’ Feature continuesAdvertisementHe’s expressing these and other controversial views in his stand-up show ‘Faith Hope and Sanity’, subtitled ‘A Few Jokes About Religion Before It Kills Us All’. He’s mounting a simultaneous assault on three separate fronts. ‘It seems to me that fundamentalist Christians, jihadist Muslims and settlement-building Jews are causing more than their share of trouble in the world. World events are being driven by people with apocalyptic delusions, while here in Britain a paralysing liberal guilt allows religious bigots to use intimidation and violence to stamp out free speech. If you can’t get laughs out of all that, you can’t get them out of anything.’
Condell’s 56. He was born an Irish Catholic but educated in Church of England schools. ‘I found myself segregated in assembly and shunted into another room while everyone said their morning prayers. I didn’t mind. The whole pantomime seemed hollow to me even then. Once you become aware of the gulf between what people profess to believe and how they actually behave, it’s hard to take any of it seriously.’- Add your comment to this feature
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60 comments
What a sensible man...more intelligence in his little finger than all the dubious cardinals, bishops, priests, mullahs, imams, rabbis and effing popes put together.
pat condell speaks without knowledge and if you want an example of something he siad that was wrong how about all saudi's are mentally ill. Yeah good ol pat tarring a whole country with his uneducated drivel.
Pat Condell for President of the United States! He is the most realistic man in the world!
Anonymous, please give an example of something Pat says which is wrong. He is just so right! You feel offended because you have been brainwashed into not thinking for yourself, but believe in midevel stories about people (Muhammad etc) which probably never existed anyway. Religion is stupidity and deserves no respect what so ever.
Very clever man, who speaks the way i feel about all religion; A doctrine for weak, feeble minded sheep who are afraid of death and who will kill as many innocent people as possible trying to prove to us that there is a god.
Pat's a wonder, the article should have been longer. It might have been had you taken out the fucking annoying averts!
Pat's a wonder, the article should have been longer. I might have been had you taken out the fucking annoying averts!
Anonymous it is easy to claim that somebody is lying but if you don't back your accusation with examples then your claim is as empty as the claims made by your religion. Peace, especially to those who shout liar without justification.
Anonymous, Pat does not come across as an angry man to me, as for old, I will be corrected but I believe Pat is in his mid fifties if you think that's old I have to assume you are very young and as such your youth reflects your experience...or lack of.
How you can accuse him of telling lies is quite incredible. To disagree with him is one thing but to accuse him of being a liar is ridiculus and says more about you than anything else. Why not post some information to back up your accusation?
I wont hold my breath....
Remember: attack Islam, not Muslims. The latter can't help it if they were born into an ideology and have it pushed on them by their parents.
The religion is fair game and should be awarded the same respect we give to Nazism.
Dear Pat. Please never stop doing what you do. Please. You do it so well, and it is so necessary. Thank you very much.
Pat, never stop doing what you do best...exposing religious bigots. Your a star.
Excellent work Pat! Islam is a politically cancerous ideology that
has a parasitical nature.Pat is a breath of fresh air in the sick room of political correctness.
The notion, "we're all going to die" is more than a little disconcerting, so naturally there's a predisposition to accept some comforting illusion. And religions are tripping over themselves to fill that need. Specifically, going to Heaven (assuming you've spent half your life on your knees staring at the ceiling) or some kind of complicated reincarnation. Sorry to break it to you so brutally mug-punters, but these are myths for the weak-minded that can’t handle mortality. When you draw your last breath, it's "Game Over". Get used to it. Face it, who but a gullible, two-dimensional rube would swallow that pernicious religious claptrap for one second? Answered my own question methinks. Only by rejecting all religious do you proclaim yourself a free-thinker.
Pat Condell is spot on. Religion is the ultimate form of wishful thinking. It also is the ultimate tool for keeping people mentally enslaved. Pat humorously expresses what a lot of people are thinking but have kept to themselves for fear of religious bullying. Keep it up!