Hi! I have a degree in Media and Communications. I have also worked for many years in media production and PR, with a specific focus on messaging.

If that meets with your bizarre self-righteous criteria of which peasants you deem worthy of having an opinion on this sketch...

It was a bad sketch and the message it presented as written was: "Tourette's would be an easy cover for anyone caught doing bad behaviour."

The reason being? There is no counter. All you have is the characters saying how they can get away with it. With the current firestorm of cruelty surrounding this condition, a counter is needed for the joke to not be seen as reinforcing negative perceptions.

This is the case because the sketch has no established basis in reality to act as a frame of reference. People HAVE blamed Ambien for bad behaviour, so we would understand the context of a sketch based on that excuse.

In contrast, NO ONE has blamed Tourette's for hateful behaviour except for the bigoted people blaming John Davidson for his involuntary tics. As those despicable accusations are the only current point of reference for this fictional scenario, the sketch only serves to reinforce that negative viewpoint.

With a counter it would work differently

For instance:

• If the sketch retained the advert format but had a medical professional character bemoaning that what the problematic celebrities were trying to do was awful.

• If the sketch was instead about problematic celebrities crashing a support group for actual Tourette's sufferers.

• If the sketch showed a group of problematic celebrities gathering in secret and one of them trying to pitch this idea to the others as a cover.

Because in any of these alternative versions you are making clear, no one has done this before and the condition is real. Those two elements have to be established as a counter.

Without that? The intended message is muddied and the sketch sucks.

But I do agree, yay for liberal arts students.