![]() What comedian could do more? It’s been clear since at least the dawning of the current Conservative era that mainstream satire, with its urbane wit and complacent rationality, wasn’t fit for purpose, that political comedy was going to need new registers to measure up to the extremity of what we were facing. Insinuating himself into its cracks, to prise open some perspective on how appalling it’s become. ![]() Such is the satirical territory Lycett is staking out – not joking about our political reality but bodysnatching it. But he’s got previous with this shtick: see his regular tweets geeing up Boris Johnson (“dont rise to it babe, im with nadine we r on ur side no matter what xoxox”), or indeed his hoax leaking of the Sue Gray report, which was in equal parts ridiculous and just about credible enough to get Whitehall knickers in a twist. Watch the broadcast, and this latest Truss trolling feels more like a gambit than something fully realised: he doesn’t look sure that it’s working. Lycett’s activist comedy tries to do something different – and more power to him for that. It draws a few gasps it’s easily contained. A mainstream satire industry exists to equip comedians with these skills, from Radio 4’s Now Show via (the late) Mock the Week and even including The Mash Report, which is often brilliant while tending to operate within the confines of what we recognise as satire. The powers-that-be, the Rob Burleys of this world, may prefer those appearances to play by the rules of the media-political complex: a few witty remarks here, a few digestible convictions there, the applecart left unmolested. ![]() We’re living through an age where comics are ubiquitous, writing newspaper columns, fronting documentaries, governing war-torn countries and, yes, appearing on political discussion shows. It comes down, perhaps, to what you want from your guest comedian. Is that a travesty? Or – as Lycett’s many supporters would have it – a public service? “Here was something genuinely subversive,” in his fellow comedian Katy Brand’s words, “delivered so politely you could barely feel the blade until it was out.” The dividing lines were drawn, between those who feel that the seriousness of Kuenssberg’s show (at a very serious time) was undermined by Lycett’s prank, and those who see that prank as the most serious and morally responsible feature of the whole hour. Feigning enthusiastic support for the positions Liz Truss staked out in her interview with Kuenssberg, Lycett had co-panellist Emily Thornberry tittering, and the show’s host on a very uncertain footing, with an appearance that went on to dominate coverage of this launch of the BBC’s major new politics format. ![]() “It’s not the time for that nonsense anymore.” Burley was not amused by the standup Joe Lycett’s appearance on the first-ever Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, which the Brummie sent up by pretending to be “incredibly rightwing”. ![]() “M emo: don’t put comedians on Question Time or any other serious political show,” tweeted the BBC’s former live politics editor Rob Burley on Sunday morning. ![]()
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