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4 October 2008

Was I wrong to turn down my chance to star on Tory TV?

I’ve been watching a lot of US television satire in recent weeks on the internet and it is all so much better than anything we have here. Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, all that. And I wonder, when this presidential election is over and done with, and if it goes the way that everybody expects, will this be the first election, ever, that satire has won? Or, to be more precise, will Sarah Palin be the first major politician whom satire has destroyed?

OK, so it’s not all deliberate satire. Palin’s genuine interview with Katie Couric on CBS News, which you must have seen by now, was pretty funny in itself, in much the same way that it would be funny to see Gordon Brown fall off a chair. Were it not for Saturday Night Live’s Tina Fey, though, she might have got away with it. Fey was born to lampoon Sarah Palin. The resemblance between the two is startling, and Fey has the mannerisms and the voice spot on. Last weekend, the best bit of her act consisted of a confused monologue originally delivered, almost word for word, by Palin herself. You simply cannot take the one seriously after seeing the other. The world ain’t big enough for the both of them.

A few weeks ago Tony Blair took the stupendously unwise decision to be interviewed on The Daily Show by the great Jon Stewart. It was funny, it was charming, it was friendly, and it was also downright brutal. Nobody, not Paxman, not Humphrys, not Hague, has ever torn the man apart to such a degree. Even when they moved on to Iraq, Blair was too crippled by the thought of being a bad sport to trot out his usual defensive waffle. At one point, Stewart asked him whether George Bush called him up at 4 a.m. to say ‘Dude! Turn on Channel 4! There’s a snake eating an egg!’ Blair smiled, and then looked down at his own smile, and froze in horror.

We have Bremner, and we have Have I Got News For You?, but the two cannot carry the candle alone. More of this sort of thing, and quickly. There is a power in it.

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Jonnie Hardy

June 2nd, 2009 3:28am Report this comment

After watching the Jon Stewart vs Blair video, it is almost embaressing to see him being ridiculed, and trying to dance around the issues that Stewart presents. Even the way he awkwardly, and very British-ly gripped the side of his chair with his hand made me feel sorry for him. Apparently it only takes one uncharismatic Brit representative being made to look highly unprepared on a chat show to make me feel warmth towards the (all too likeable) American sitting in front of him and to ignore the over excited, over enthusiastic female dominated audiece. Think I might watch a bit more of the Daily Show from now on.

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