Dapper Laughs: vile, humourless misogyny? It's banter, innit? You may not have heard of Dapper Laughs. Lucky you. Allow me to enlighten you, if that is the word. Dapper - the cheeky nom de guerre of south Londoner Daniel O'Reilly - is very much the Nigel Farage of modern comedy. Like Farage, Dapper managed to build up a remarkable grassroots fanbase long before he troubled the awareness of mainstream audiences, without any of the usual costly publicity machinery, armed only with a smartphone and views that apparently strike a chord with "ordinary blokes." Through his various social media accounts Dapper posts videos of himself engaging in "banter," which mainly consists of shouting sexual comments or insults at women in the street while filming their reaction. "Hey darling, can I smell your fanny?" - that sort of fun. You might be forgiven for confusing this with sexual harassment, just as people often confuse some of Ukip's view with racism, but that's probably because you're one of those humourless liberals or feminists who fail to understand the basic concept of "banter," which is that you're allowed to say anything you like to anybody, no matter how offensive, as long as it's a joke, because, y'know, free speech. Dapper now has his own "dating" show on ITV2, in which he dishes out advice on how to "get pussy" to lonely "gashless" lads who lack his charms. People, including male comics and commentators, not just us humourless feminists, have quite reasonably protested that the show legitimises the most base kind of misogyny, glorifying a lad culture that reduces women to a collection of holes to be conquered (by whatever means), dismissed and jeered at afterwards. ITV is presumably too "moist" (Dapper's favourite word) at the prospect of his nearly two million Facebook followers, an untapped audience previously below the radar of the comedy industry, to trouble itself with such tricky moral questions as whether it is promoting predatory attitudes. "All humour is subjective," its viewer services officer helpfully explained last week in an email response to a (male) Twitter user who had contacted ITV to complain, going on to say that, while Dapper's humour may be "risque," "his unique brand of banter and brash charm is neither sexist nor degrading to women." This despite the fact that he jokes about beating his girlfriend. You see? Banter! Bit of fun! If you're offended, well, it's obviously not your sense of humour. If you even have one. Like Ukip, Dapper has also recently embroiled himself in a controversy with a charity. He's made a Christmas "album," Proper Naughty Christmas, the proceeds of which, he claims, will be going to "the homeless." He doesn't specify which charity and, according to a spokesperson for Sony Music, the album is not billed as a charity album, but let's give Dapper the benefit of the doubt and assume he fully intended to give all the profits to help the homeless. Things turned nasty last week when two writers from the website UsVsTh3m.com reviewed the album, pointing out that, in it, he insults a tramp who, he says, "stinks of shit." This is a bit like helping the homeless by throwing pound coins and trying to hit them on the head, for fun. Dapper responded by encouraging his Twitter followers to tell the two writers, Nathaniel Tapley and Abi Wilkinson, to "fuck off," resulting in a deluge of vicious insults to both, including threats of violence and rape (banter!) and some fans tweeting abuse direct to the homeless charity Shelter. Presumably whether you find that hilarious or offensive is also "subjective." There's a happy footnote: having publicly stated that it would not accept any donations from Dapper Laughs, Shelter went on to raise £3,628 in 24 hours from Twitter users wanting to show support for Tapley and Wilkinson. Dapper Laughs is a modern phenomenon - the internet sensation who has crossed into the mainstream. Like every other performer with a public platform, he now has to accept that his work will receive public criticism. He's not the first comedian to set his fans on someone who disagrees with him - Ricky Gervais was accused of cyber-bullying two years ago for the same thing - but if he has hopes of building a television career, he would do well to bear in mind his ITV overlords" mantra that all comedy is subjective. Some people will find fault with it and that's also called free speech. Mobilising the pitchforks every time starts to look a lot like harassment. Last week, we learned that a dedicated climate change denier, Jim Inhofe, is expected to take the top environmental job in the US Senate, an appointment that would be on a par with making Dapper Laughs minister for women. I read this news on my way to see 2071, a new work at the Royal Court, in which Chris Rapley, professor of climate science at UCL, sets out the bald facts about the impact of carbon emissions on our planet's fragile systems. It's staggering that anyone could deny the evidence of the latest IPCC report, "the most audited scientific document in history," but then I suppose these are the people who also deny the evidence of dinosaurs. Science, they seem to believe, is also subjective. I'm conscious that I've become a climate bore lately, but I've only recently been struck by the urgency of it all. In the past month, the combination of the climate marches, David Mitchell's novel The Bone Clocks, Naomi Klein's terrifying polemic This Changes Everything and now 2071, has convinced me that it's all we should be talking about - that and the fact that we're wearing T-shirts at Halloween. But while it might feel that there are plenty of reasons to despair, both Rapley and Klein offer glimmers of hope; we can all contribute to the debate at a grassroots level, as the international marches showed. 2071 ought to be compulsory viewing for all politicians; in the end, it's the objective facts, not the partisan emotions, which will become impossible to deny.