Dear Arj Barker,

We have never met. I’ve never seen you perform live, and I detest stand-up comedy, so I couldn’t say whether your routine involves improv, interpretive dance, or the weeping ghost of Craig McLachlan’s singing career. Before yesterday, for all I knew, you could’ve been a brand of sneakers, the title of a Taylor Swift song, or one of the grooms from an upcoming MAFS episode.

No laughing matter. Arj Barker (L); Trish Faranda with daughter Clara (R). Credit: Andrew Murfett/The Age

Having established my bona fides, Arj, can I just add this: I think you are my spirit animal, I am in love with you, and – had I not already donated my reproductive organs to science – I would happily have had your baby. But, having previously given birth to four others, do you know what I would not have done with our beloved (and thankfully for humankind, entirely non-existent) offspring? I would not have taken it to your show. Not even if your script called for it to be dangled from a balcony or sawed in half by a magician’s assistant or fired from a cannon as part of a spectacular finale involving pyrotechnics.

All of which is why, my dearest Arj, I thought I’d inadvertently stumbled across one of your punchlines when I discovered you were forced to stop one of your shows at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival to ask a mother and baby to leave. I was further horrified to discover that, instead of flinging their underwear onstage and nominating you for immediate citizenship and/or canonisation pending papal approval, a group of 10 or 12 audience members got up and left in solidarity.

Wait. What?

Worse still, instead of acknowledging her embarrassing misstep and taking deep cover by camouflaging herself with nappy rash cream yesterday, the mother in question, Trish Faranda, along with her cousin Danielle, doubled down on their righteous fury at having been ejected in the first place, with Trish reporting that her seven-month-old daughter had “had a bit of a whinge – nothing super loud”, before being given her marching (crawling? bum-shuffling?) orders.

Danielle, meanwhile, took to that renowned hotbed of critical thought and reasoned argument, X – formerly Twitter – to implore you, Arj, to rethink your actions, apparently because they constituted a human rights violation.

“With all of the hatred and violence women are faced with, among the countless atrocities happening in the world today, I ask you to simply take a long, hard look at yourself,” Danielle wrote.