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No-one goes to work for the ‘banter’, Mr Hunt

Susannah Butter: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures
Susannah Butter: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures

A new weapon has been deployed in the crusade to coax us back to offices. It’s all very well telling people that the economy depends on them commuting into cities, or reassuring them that public transport is safe to use, but what Jeremy Hunt thinks will get us to return to the nine to five is a force more powerful than that; it’s banter. Yesterday the former health secretary morphed into the self-appointed Archbishop of Banterbury, arguing that the reason we must stop working from home is because we “need a bit of banter”.

What an unfortunate choice of word. No one needs banter. Or bants for that matter. In fact, if I was told my office would provide it I would go straight into self-isolation and never return. The bants pandemic is on the Tube too, with a Dettol advert reminding us of all the aspects of office life we are supposed to love, from “seeing your second family” to “proper bants”. Of course there is a legitimate point about the value of office interaction — the spontaneous in-jokes and exchange of ideas that can’t be replicated on a stilted Zoom call. But that’s not what I understand by banter. At best this phenomenon is tragi-comic — see the unfortunately named restaurant Scoff and Banter (I don’t want to be seen scoffing or bantering, thanks) — while at worst it is a pernicious, bullying strand of lad culture.

In former jobs I’ve had the misfortune to work with man toddlers who brushed off calling women slags and undermining them as banter. This excuse for humour thrives on Facebook, where groups say they are not for those who can’t take a joke. Or maybe it is that the joke isn’t good enough. “Banter” was first used in a 1677 play called Madam Fickle, and defined using the example of a weak gag about turning a cork into a horse. Since then it has mutated and is usually accompanied with booze and babes, often on “the banter bus”. The apex was 2016 when a club rep convinced the press that he had accidentally ended up in Syria on a hungover boat trip.

It is revealing that Donald Trump’s behaviour is often associated with banter, while comedians like Frankie Boyle don’t want to be associated with it anymore. Hunt means well. He has engaged in banter, notably when Boris Johnson ducked out of the TV leadership debate last year and he provided commentary on Twitter. But if a joke is genuinely funny, as his were, it is above banter. So by all means remind us that going to the office can be enjoyable but just don’t call it banter.