I don't think people are saying that Mr Falafel shouldn't have told the joke. As I said earlier in the thread, I saw his show, and it definitely didn't stick out as one of the better ones in his repertoire (didn't remember it at all, in fact...). However, it also didn't stick out as a bad/ poor taste joke in the context of the show. It was one of a series of vegetable (and fruit)-based puns. The show was called "one giant leek for mankind" - so a combination of vegetables (especially the fart-inducing properties of the allium family) and the moon landings - obviously. It was a children's show.... I was more offended by a member of the audience shouting out a synonym for fart, as requested, of "a burping spider"...
Though I admit, I'm not in the target market for being offended/ saddened or whatever, not having direct experience of Tourettes, and not knowing that the "shouting out random words" aspect isn't typical of the condition. So I've learnt something....
However, someone from Dave decided that it was worthy of going on a shortlist for some reason. I'm not sure how the jokes were chosen - whether put forward by the comedians themselves, or selected by "mystery punters" at the shows or something? And from that shortlist, 2000 Dave-watchers (or whatever) decided that it was the best - outside the context of the show, and presumably not considering the implications. So I think the blame for the selected joke being in either poor taste or offensive (or indeed, not a very good stand-alone joke) lies solely with the good burghers of Dave. I agree it probably wasn't a good idea for the shortlist to include something with the potential to cause upset to vulnerable people. Given there are A LOT OF JOKES around at the moment, why choose that one for the Dave-watchers to select? And i can see that it being promoted as the best one from the entire Edinburgh Festival doesn't give a particularly good name to the festival - for a variety of reasons. But, hey, maybe Dave wanted to get people talking about it, and discussing the nature of comedy, and the nature of offense and so on (no auto-correct, I don't mean offence). Or, more probably, they didn't think at all and just reported the findings of their (self-selecting?) voters.
In any case, I don't think the format of a 2-line "joke" necessarily sums up what is funny from the festival anyway. Things I've laughed at most this year have been much more convoluted stories without a punchline as such, improvised stuff, cleverly crafted comedy songs and someone in an inflatable dinosaur outfit trying to get down some stairs. But that can't really be summed up as a headline-grabbing "this is the funniest thing at the festival this year..."