Stephen Fry comments: Cricket club members say claims are ‘incorrect’

Members of the Marylebone Cricket Club have rallied behind Stephen Fry after he was accused of making racist and misogynistic jokes a cricket dinner he hosted.

An official complaint was lodged against Mr Fry alleging that he implied women members of the club were absent because they were ‘sh*gging’ and is also accused of having made a joke about Islamic terrorism.

But some diners have disputed the complaint and claim the alleged misogynistic joke was misheard and the racist one was never made.

Guy Lavender, MCC chief executive, has also called the complainant’s account ‘factually incorrect’.

The complaint was made by Marylebone Cricket Club member Chris Waterman, who claimed Mr Fry, 65, said: ‘I had intended to say, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen”, but there are no lady members present. I suppose they are off sh*gging.’

The actor and comedian, according to Mr Waterman, also referred to the Allahakbarries, an amateur cricket team founded by the Peter Pan author JM Barrie and joked that ‘the term “Allahu Akbar”, when used today, is usually followed by a loud bang’. 

Mr Lavender said Mr Waterman’s account was ‘factually incorrect’. He told The Times: ‘The dinner in question was enjoyed by those that attended and we have not received any other complaint from attendees in this regard.’

Other diners allege that Mr Fry’s remark was misheard, claiming he actually said: ‘I had intended to say “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen” but there are no lady members present. Now we can talk about sh*gging.’

They claim Mr Fry, who is club president, was intending to mock the ‘under representation of women’ at the dinner. The attendees also allege they ‘did not hear’ the joke about Muslims.

The actor has refused to apologise despite Mr Waterman’s call for him to face disciplinary action.

MailOnline has approached the club for comment. 

Mr Waterman, 75, and a member of the MCC for 25 years, lodged his complaint the day after the dinner. 

Saturday night he told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The MCC is male, pale, frail and stale. I have been trying to reform it for eight years.’

His complaint says: ‘After the meal, the president called all the serving staff back into the room to thank them.

‘I interrupted and asked him if he would apologise for his earlier comments about women, and he said, “No, I was referring to women members” and continued speaking.’

Mr Waterman says in his complaint of the Allahu Akbar comment: ‘I am unsure whether there were any Muslims in the room, but even if there were not, this is not an acceptable “joke” in 2023.’

The education policy adviser also alleged that while no women were present at the dinner, female catering staff were.

Mr Lavender on Saturday acknowledged that the complaint had been received.

Since becoming the president last year, Mr Fry has attempted to modernise the MCC, which owns Lord’s and has global influence on the game of cricket. 

He has been accused by some members of being too woke in his approach.

Mr Fry had planned to axe the Eton and Harrow and Varsity matches, but the decision was reversed after a members staged a ‘revolt,’ according to The Times.

Waterman has also been a ‘divisive figure’ within the club. He made bids for committee positions but when he failed to get them, blamed ‘chumocracy’.

Mr Fry is also not the first MCC official to be criticised over jokes made during an event. Chariman Bruce Carnegie-Brown was disciplined following the annual meeting last summer after making a joke during a ‘long break’ about members ‘taking an age to empty their colostomy bags’. 

From telling child abuse victims to ‘grow up’ to slamming ‘ignorant racists’ who oppose tearing down historical statues: A look at Stephen Fry’s history of controversial remarks 

Stephen Fry has a history of making somewhat divisive comments as he tackles topics such as racism, freedom of speech and cancel culture.

He came under fire in 2016 for claiming that ‘self-pitying’ child abuse victims needed to ‘grow up.’

And amid the surge of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, Mr Fry slammed those who support preservation of statues that had ties to racist history.

MailOnline looks back at some of the actor’s seemingly controversial remarks. 

Stephen Fry says ‘self-pitying’ child abuse victims should ‘grow up’

Mr Fry sparked outrage in 2016 after criticising the idea of safe spaces and trigger words, and saying that child victims of sexual abuse should ‘grow up’ and not feel sorry for themselves.

The actor, author and television personality made the controversial comments during an interview with Dave Rubin on the current events TV show The Rubin Report.

Mr Rubin asked Fry about whether he considered ‘the regressive left, coming after language and free speech’ to be an issue in Britain.

The actor replied: ‘We fear that it’s going to happen more and more because America leads and Britain follows in all kinds of ways.’ 

He added, referring to controversy over a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College in Oxford: ‘I think it started to happen in Britain with the attempted removal of statues of people who are considered unlikable – who were once beloved – and have become in a very 1984 way, “unpersons”‘.

Mr Fry went on to say that he believes some people are becoming too sensitive, criticising those who avoid ‘trigger words’ for fear of controversy. 

He said: ‘There are many great plays which contain rapes, and the word rape now is even considered a rape.

‘They’re terrible things and they have to be thought about, clearly, but if you say you can’t watch this play, you can’t watch Titus Andronicus, or you can’t read it in an English class, or you can’t watch Macbeth because it’s got children being killed in it, it might trigger something when you were young that upset you once, because uncle touched you in a nasty place, well I’m sorry.

‘It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place – you get some of my sympathy – but your self pity gets none of my sympathy.’

Mr Fry later apologised for the remarks. 

Stephen Fry revealed transgender friends were ‘deeply upset’ by JK Rowling and urged calm in debate over trans issues

Stephen Fry, who narrated the Harry Potter audiobooks, revealed last year that his transgender and intersex friends are ‘deeply upset’ by author JK Rowling.

He urged calm in the debate over transgender issues and argued that he would ‘love to see’ both sides in the trans discourse stop fighting.

Mr Fry told podcast Beeb Watch that Ms Rowling is still a ‘friend’, but added: ‘I have trans friends and intersex friends who are deeply upset by her.’

His remarks came as Rowling was accused of transphobia over a string of contentious tweets and proud public appearances with authors who have proudly labelled themselves ‘TERFS’.

The actor said of the trans debate: ‘I don’t think there’s a winner. I know that JK Rowling doesn’t want to see trans people bullied, alienated, shut out of society, made to feel ashamed, guilty, laughed at, all those things.

‘But I also know […] that there are people who believe that safe feminine spaces and the idea of the difference between sex and gender is very important and that they […] repudiate, with all their strength, the kind of [gender theorist] Judith Butler idea of created gender and so on. And it’s not an argument I want to get involved in, because it’s upsetting to both sides.

‘I would…wish them both to retreat, and to consider that it is possible for trans people to live full, accepted lives, according to their terms, in society, and for women to have all the rights and dignities that they demand.’

Stephen Fry declares ‘it’s rude’ to call a female cricketer ‘batsman’

Mr Fry argued that referring to female cricketers as ‘batsman’ is ‘rude’ when he issued his support for using more modern terminology in the sport.

‘You can’t say batsman of a woman. It’s just rude,’ he told The Times last July. ‘Let’s go back to ‘bowlsman’. Oh no, we don’t call them ‘bowlsmen’, do we? Or ‘bowlsladies’. No, we just call them bowlers.’

He argued that it was only ‘our generation’ who were upset by the introduction of so-called ‘woke’ language into the sport.

‘It will very quickly pass. In a few years’ time, people will be absolutely fine,’ he argued.

Mr Fry also noted how complaints about inclusive terminology ‘always come from people who value politeness.’

He added: ‘And that’s all it is. It’s politeness.’

Britons are ‘deluded’ in thinking we have a more tolerant society than America, says Stephen Fry

Last year Mr Fry argued that Britain deludes itself about being a tolerant nation, but shouldn’t think we’re better than America when it comes to racial prejudice.

The actor and presenter said he was ‘shocked and embarrassed’ when he realised that he was a part of the problem as a ‘decent progressive’ person.

Mr Fry told the Hay Festival of literature and arts last May: ‘There are two types of racism… one of the National Front type… But there is also the fact that our world as white people is such a blissfully easy swim… and we’re not aware of what a white space it is and how unwelcoming it has been for people of colour, especially black people.

‘British people, we do rather like to think that, because we’re politer and nicer than Americans, that our racism, “while it might exist…” of course it’s all bull****, we delude ourselves. It’s like any self-mythologising.’

Suggesting that the mere mention of tolerance was proof of the opposite, he added: ‘This idea we’re a very tolerant nation, the British – ugh. All right, talk about yourselves as tolerant, but actually think what that really means.’

He made the comments while interviewing Homeland actor David Harewood about the racism he faced as a child and while trying to find work in the UK. 

Stephen Fry hits out at ‘muddled’ Cambridge University policy 

The University of Cambridge in 2020 proposed a series of rules which would require academics to be ‘respectful of the diverse identities of others’.

The proposed rule, which meant academic community members could face disciplinary action for mocking people they disagree with, sparked a free speech row. Critics argued the proposal was ‘authoritarian’.

Mr Fry was one of the high-profile figures to voice his opposition of the proposal, branding it as ‘rather muddled’.

In a column in The Sunday Times, Mr Fry argued at the time: ‘A demand for respect is like a demand for a laugh, or demands for love, loyalty and allegiance. They cannot be given if not felt.’

He continued: ‘There are many opinions, positions and points of view which I find I do not and cannot respect. That is surely true for all of us.’

Ultimately, the university voted against introducing the guideline.

‘Distasteful’ Stephen Fry’s ‘lurid’ speech was too much for dinner guests

Stephen Fry was branded ‘distasteful’ in 2014 over ‘lurid’ remarks he made at the Hay Literary Festival dinner in the City of London.

The actor treated guests to a graphic story about Gore Vidal’s stay at a top London hotel where he rang a gay escort agency to arrange a boy for an energetic afternoon session.

Despite being attended by usually liberal-minded literary types, Mr Fry’s lurid details of the sex act with the young man and what he would or would not perform was too much for some guests. 

‘Fry’s speech was deeply distasteful,’ an insider told The Daily Mail at the time.

Stephen Fry admits he ‘hated’ the London gay scene in the 80s

Mr Fry once revealed he was made to feel ‘undesirable’ in the early 80s and hated the London gay scene at the time.

The actor and writer said he struggled with loneliness after moving to the capital during the outbreak of the AIDS pandemic.

Speaking on the podcast Homo Sapiens in April 2020, as quoted in Metro, the comedian said: ‘I always hated what was called “the scene” when I arrived in London – I arrived in London at a bad time for any gay person, in 1981 during the HIV virus.

‘I remember hearing about GRID – gay related immune deficiency and all kinds of other strange words… we’d go to Heaven and various other gay clubs and a sweet gay bar in Chelsea, The Queen’s Head. 

‘And I didn’t mind the little old pub but the look up and down sweeping eyes as you walk into a club and, in my case, the look up and down and the quick turn away. I’m such an undesirable person. I’m as far from cute as it’s possible to be.

‘Not that I particularly wanted to be… also I just don’t like dance places, I like talking.’ 

The Blackadder star’s loneliness and feelings of mental discomfort continued into the 1990s when he had a nervous breakdown and walked out of the West End play Cell Mates. 

He told the podcast: ‘It wasn’t until I had the awful experience in the mid-90s when I was in a play and I walked out, this was when I had to start examining my mind and what was going on with me and why I was unhappy when I was at the top of the game that I had set myself.

‘I had achieved things I never dreamed of – everything should have been wonderful, every light was green and yet I was in such a state of total misery and distress. 

‘Weirdly it was almost the exact same time that I was cast in the film to play Oscar Wilde that I met my first boyfriend since Cambridge. I think I realised one of the things I was unhappy about was that I was lonely, I really was.’ 

Mr Fry, who has been married to Elliott Spencer since 2015, has been vocal in the past about his struggles with mental health, admitting his ‘relentless’ battle with bipolar disorder is ‘incurable’.

Stephen Fry declares ‘classical liberalism dead’ in plea for kindness

Mr Fry, a few years back, declared classical liberalism dead and called on people to stop ‘behaving like a*******s.’

He made his plea for kindness at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, Australia in November 2018.

‘Classical liberalism and its post-war ideology of social democracy are dead,’ he told the audience, as quoted in The Independent. 

‘It’s over, it’s had its day. We’ve woken up to find ourselves uprooted and displaced.’

The actor said that ‘no one cares what we think’ and alleged citizens are ‘cowering down in the ravine while the armies clash above.’

He further alleged that he felt like an ‘irrelevant bystanders’ as both the left and right waged their ‘culture war’ online. 

Mr Fry added: ‘If someone is behaving like an a*******, it isn’t cancelled out by you behaving like an a*******. Be better. Not better than they are. But better than you are.’

Stephen Fry says those who oppose tearing down statues are ‘ignorant of history’ 

Stephen Fry last year argued that people who oppose tearing down statues of historical figures with a racist past are ‘ignorant of history’.

Speaking on the Distraction Pieces podcast hosted by actor Scroobius Pip, Mr Fry said protesters who topple monuments – like the one dedicated to slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol – are trying to ‘highlight’ history, not ‘airbrush’ it. 

Mr Fry suggested it was ignorant to get upset at such actions and blame it on ‘wokeness’, and those who do take issue with bringing down monuments are ‘the ones who are most ignorant of history’.

He made the comments as he agreed podcast host Scroobius Pip who said that ‘so many cultures’ have had more than two genders ‘for the entirety of their history’, and ‘[the idea of] two genders is a modern thing’. 

Mr Fry replied: ‘So right, it is one of the ironies of this kind of culture war, exchange, that it is those who are upset by and regard it as just wokeness or cultural Marxism or whatever else they want to call it – they’re the ones who are most ignorant of history.

‘They say ”oh, they’re trying to airbrush history by pulling down this statue” – no, we are trying to highlight history, trying to show what the true history of the thing is, what it bears, what language bears, what icons and statuary and images bear.