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Ofcom Won’t Be Investigating “Friday Night Live” After Jordan Gray’s Skit

· Updated on March 23, 2023

On the Channel 4 program Friday Night Live, trans comedian Jordan Gray performed a hilarious musical routine that culminated in her stripping nude and playing the piano with her penis. Predictably, there has been an outcry from the UK’s TERF crowd, scandalized by the mere prospect of trans nudity on a late night program. However, broadcasting regulator Ofcom (Office of Communications) has backed the show, dismissing over 1,600 desperate complaints.

Ofcom told PinkNews that it would not be investigating the show, especially considering it took place after the 9pm watershed (when nudity is allowed on TV). “In our view, audiences would be likely to have expected controversial humour from this one-off special reviving an established alternative comedy series.

“We also took into account the time of the broadcast, which came more than an hour after the watershed, and the advance on-air warnings about very strong language and adult humour.”

Gray performed a song about her own, often comical trans experience before coming to the satirical conclusion that she’s “Better than You.” Transphobes responded with bizarre calls for Gray to be arrested for the “sex crime” of being nude on TV, despite the fact that Channel 4 has an entire series, Naked Attraction, dedicated to late-night nudity.

Gray, meanwhile, was handily tuning out the haters. “I cried on the way home,” she told PinkNews. “I got in a taxi after the after-party, and I saw a consolidation of a load of the best comments and it was people saying, ‘I just feel seen’ or ‘I feel like I don’t need to feel ashamed and I haven’t had that feeling yet’.”

As for why she thinks the song resonated so strongly with audiences, she explained, “It’s not a long clinical conversation about what it means to be a man and a woman. It’s a large nude person just joyfully expressing themself. So everyone can get on board for that.”

Although Gray has appeared on The Voice and the awesome web series Transaction, she has not experienced a similar outpouring of support. “I did The Voice in 2016. It was a lovely response, but I’ve never had that overwhelming sense that I actually did something that made loads of people’s lives a little bit better.”

At the end of the day, Gray says, “If one person’s life was made a little better, it was worth it, but it was a lot. It was so cool I got to move the needle a tiny bit.”

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Tags: Comedian UK
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