This piece originally appeared in The Demon newspaper Issue 116. It's an interesting one to look back at. An early scene from the culture wars. I'd have a different approach now. I disagree with some of what past-me says, but it's not too buttock-clenching.

Cast your mind back to the crazy days of Freshers’ Week 2014. The campus is full of fresh-faced First Years and tired, hungover First Years. Narborough Road Tesco is bustling with parents ensuring that their offspring will actually eat this week, and groups of flat-mates attempting to get the measure of each other. One strolls around wearing a leopard print shirt, holding an open can of lager as it quickly dawns on his timid flat-mates that they've got to live with him for a whole year.

Many of them are wearing 'FreshFest14' wristbands; you remember those, don’t you? If memory serves, clubbing was the main focus for the wristbanded events. But, there was something else… some kind of fashion, comedy crossover event. Suave Giggles? Well Dressed Chuckles? Debonair Guffaws?

I am referring to the Dapper Laughs gig at the Students’ Union on the 23^rd September. If you're not aware of Dapper Laughs, well done. He previously performed stand-up comedy on cruise ships, those well known hot bed of innovative new talent, before giving it up and rising to social media fame by posting endless 'Vines'. These six second videos feature hackneyed jokes, lazy, laddy interactions with unsuspecting members of the public, and clips in which the punch line is the implication that someone is gay. They're all presented by the self proclaimed ‘cheeky cockney chappie’ Dapper Laughs. But being unfunny is not actually a crime, unfortunately. Comedy all comes down to taste. It would be childish of me to complain that someone I don't find funny was performing at my university, and it would be poor journalism to go to a show I was certain I wouldn’t enjoy purely so I could relish writing a scathing review.

I don’t think, however, that it would be childish to complain if someone whose act was described by students as ‘offensive, derogatory and bad taste’, performed at my university. When I then went on to ask Narmeen Kamran if she thought that Dapper Laughs was an appropriate act for De Montfort Students’ Union she laughed, saying ‘No. That question made me laugh more than I did throughout the entire show.’

De Montfort’s Students’ Union declined to comment.

Mr Laughs’ opening gambit was to endear himself to the audience by walking on and calling the entire front row ‘slags’. This received a rather cold response. The jokes continued in a similar vein throughout the night, Alastair Ulke said that ‘It wasn’t victimless humour, every joke was at the expense of somebody’ ‘It took a long time to warm up just because people really had to chose to find it funny in some places.’ The audience’s response, however, did not remain as icy, in fact Alastair said that ‘There were people laughing. He wasn’t persecuting anybody, he was making jokes and it was your right to be offended.’

All the students I talked to agree that Dapper Laughs was not politically correct. Chris Franklin enjoyed the show, but also agreed that ‘his comedy can be misogynistic’ adding ‘but just because those are the jokes he delivers, that doesn’t mean that’s who he is.’ There seems to be a general agreement between the male students I spoke to that, although Dapper Laughs was undeniably un-PC, he wasn’t deliberately offensive. In Alastair’s words: ‘he wasn’t setting out to annoy anybody. I’m not sure I’d call it mean-spirited humour. You can chose to be offended but he’s got a crowd here who he hopes are more fans of his than not fans of his.’ Narmeen, on the other hand, said that the majority of people laughing were male and that ‘he was encouraging our students to act in a derogatory way towards women’ ‘it was uncomfortable that the audience was laughing at these incredibly misogynistic jokes.’

Chris says that the Vine star has a huge female following, and that there were female students who ‘were dressed up to the nines, and if you know anything about him, you know he’s going to ridicule you for it.’ This suggests that they’re in on the joke and find it funny when he calls them derogatory names. What if you aren’t in on the joke? This was an event open to anyone with a FreshFest’14 wristband, expecting them to all be aware of Dapper Laughs and prepared to ignore, or else consider with a sense of irony, his overtly misogynistic diatribe is unreasonable and unacceptable.

Offence. Is it taken or given? Is there such a thing as ‘just a joke’? These are questions which have been, and will be, debated in the comedy world for years to come. The problem is that there is ambiguity. If it is ambiguous whether an act is misogynistic, then he is not a suitable act for a university.

All the students I talked to also agreed that Dapper Laughs’ show was an example of ‘Lad humour’. Alastair said that the subject matter was based around ideas and jokes that he’d heard before, but that he’d heard in a pub rather than on a stage. Does this make Dapper Laughs a man of the people? Someone whose views are easy to identify with for a student audience? If this is the case then the SU fulfilled its remit by booking an act who appealed to their students. When asked if he thought that Dapper Laughs was a ‘man of the people’, Alastair described him as ‘a man of a certain group of people’ who ‘appeals to a certain core of students’.

Earlier this year Dapper Laughs (dis)graced the iTunes top 10, with his novelty 'song' Proper Moist which he describes as 'a funny song. It makes you want to moisturise a couple of birds to it.' The song includes the lyrics 'They'll be hatin' on me for just havin' a bit of fun I'll track her down and f*** your mom.' This time last year, Students' Unions up and down the country were banning Robin Thicke's infamous Blurred Lines from being played due to its degrading lyrics and video. Universities, as institutions which pride themselves on equality and education, took a stand to prevent a recording of a four minute song being played. Yet Dapper Laughs, who, in a Daily Star interview, listed one of his 'Top 10 tips to pick up birds' as 'If you can touch a woman while talking to her so its (sic) part of your conversation, without it coming across as sexual harassment, you're in', performed live during Freshers' Week.

Did you go to the Dapper Laughs show? Have you got an opinion you’d like to share? Email me: comedy.thedemon@demon-media.co.uk