MPs conclude after hearing from forty-one witnesses that two freedoms can coexist, then ask for a further report on how.
LONDON, 17 October 2026 – A House of Commons select committee published an interim finding on Friday that adults in Britain are free to choose their gym clothing and that comedians are free to tell jokes, and that these two liberties do not appear to interfere with each other in any way the committee could identify.
The inquiry was launched in June, before the current American argument over Shane Gillis’s Saturday Night Live monologue, but its timing has made it newsworthy. The Spun reported that Gillis, hosting on 10 October, told the audience women had started dressing a certain way at the gym, using a crude word, and that Dan Levy then said in an Instagram video that women wearing short shorts does not make them what Gillis called them. Comedians including Kerryn Feehan and Ego Nwodim responded with gym photographs of their own, in different spirits.
The committee said none of this had been put before it in evidence, and that it had nevertheless reached its conclusion “independently, and with great difficulty.”
What the Law Actually Says
Committee staff began by reading the relevant legislation. Article 10 of the European Convention, which is incorporated into UK law through Schedule 1 of the Human Rights Act 1998, protects freedom of expression, including the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information. It also says the exercise of that freedom carries duties and responsibilities and may be subject to restrictions prescribed by law.
The committee’s clerk read this aloud at the first hearing. “So you can say it,” said the chair, Sir Rodney Aldous-Bligh, 66. “And you can be told off for saying it. And a television channel can decide not to put you on. And none of that is the government.”
He said he had needed to hear it three times and wished the record to show that he had.
The Philosopher Is Called
The committee also asked for historical advice and was directed to John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, first published in 1859, which argues at length about the limits of society’s power over the individual. A research officer summarised it in a briefing note of four pages. The chair asked whether a shorter version existed. The research officer said that a shorter version was the book’s whole argument and was usually misquoted.
Several members said they had always meant to read it. One said he had been given a copy at university and had used it to prop up a wardrobe. The committee agreed that this was a sign of how seriously the book had been taken.
Forty-One Witnesses
The hearings were long. Witnesses included fitness instructors, two stand-up comedians, a media lawyer, a woman who runs a book club in Stockport and a man who described himself as “an independent commentator” and who was asked to leave after eleven minutes for commentating.
The instructors told the committee that gym clothing was, in their experience, chosen for a variety of reasons, none of which was the committee’s business. The comedians told the committee that jokes sometimes land and sometimes do not, and that they would prefer the committee not to rule on which was which. The media lawyer said broadcasters have wide editorial discretion, within the law, over whom they hire and what they air.
The book club member, Denise Alcock, 49, told the committee she had come to say that she thought the whole matter was silly. “I wear what’s comfortable,” she said. “If a man says something rude, I tell him he’s being rude. If he says something funny, I laugh. Sometimes it’s the same man on the same day. I don’t see why it needs a committee.”
The chair thanked her and said that her evidence had been “extremely useful and, regrettably, very short.”
The Draft Recommendations
The committee’s draft report makes eleven recommendations. The first is that women should be free to wear what they like to a gym. The second is that men should be free to wear what they like too, “within the limits of the sort of vest that has recently caused concern.” The third is that comedians should be free to tell jokes, and that audiences should be equally free to dislike them in writing, on the internet, at length.
The fourth recommendation is that nobody should film a stranger exercising without that stranger’s agreement. The fifth is that television companies should continue to take their own decisions, subject to Ofcom, and that those decisions should be allowed to be criticised.
Recommendations six to eleven concern the creation of a further committee to monitor the first five. Sir Rodney said this was normal practice and that the second committee would be smaller, with better tea.
The Government Response
A government spokesperson welcomed the report and said ministers would study it carefully. Asked whether the government had a position on gym clothing, the spokesperson said that it was not the business of the state to tell adults what to wear on a treadmill, and then said that this was off the record, and then said it was on the record after all, because it seemed fine.
The committee will take further evidence in November. The first witness has been asked to bring a short summary of Mill and a pair of shorts, and to say which of the two is more useful.
Five Humorous Observations
- Four months and forty-one witnesses to conclude that adults can wear shorts and tell jokes. That’s the most expensive “no shit” in the history of Parliament.
- A man used John Stuart Mill to prop up a wardrobe. That’s the most honest review that book’s ever had. It’s not that it doesn’t hold weight. It just doesn’t come with the Allen key.
- The chair needed to hear it three times. That’s Parliament. You tell them it’s Tuesday and they’ll want it in writing, with a second committee.
- The book club woman said it in two sentences. They thanked her for being short. In the Commons that’s an insult. You don’t get a pass-mark for brevity, you get a recess.
- A man was thrown out for commentating after eleven minutes. Which, to be fair, is also how long most men last on the rowing machine before they start explaining the rowing machine.
This article is satire. The Saturday Night Live monologue and the public reaction are reported as they were published, and the legislation and book cited are real; the committee, its chair, the witnesses and the quotations are invented. The Commons committee spent four months confirming that a joke and a disclaimer can coexist on the same page, then requested a further report from our political satire desk.
