On the posters in the Tube at the moment are these adverts for Argumental, which is the Dave channel’s first self-generated panel show.
On the posters in the Tube at the moment are these adverts for Argumental, which is the Dave channel’s first self-generated panel show. I don’t want to knock Dave too much because it’s generally a good thing: the reliable stand-by you end up with if there’s nothing on the terrestrial channels, BBC4, BBC3, Sky One or the Military History channel. It’s got repeats of Top Gear. It has repeats of QI. What’s not to like?
Well, Argumental would be my slight problem. Take those poster ads. There’s a picture of the show’s compère John Sergeant dressed in army uniform, and one of Marcus Brigstocke as a naval officer and the other one you’ve never heard of before but are predisposed to like because of his extravagant facial hair, Rufus Hound got up as an RAF pilot.
And you know pretty much what message it’s trying to give out, but every time I see it I want to shake my fist at it and swear. OK, so it’s quite possible that in a second world war situation Sergeant might have done his bit camping it up in an It Ain’t Half Hot Mum type ENSA unit; and Hound, I don’t know about, he hasn’t sufficient form for me to judge; but Brigstocke? No ruddy way can I see Brigstocke on the heaving, icicle-encrusted bridge of a destroyer in Force 10 seas saying in clipped tones, ‘Mug of cocoa, number one?’
Sure, he almost seems right for the part with his bland public school features and his posh-sounding surname. But an officer in the Senior Service? No way would so dismal a pinko have been allowed anywhere near one of His Majesty’s warships. Not that young Brigstocke would have been interested. He would have been far too busy somewhere like the Foreign Office, secretly passing on military secrets to Comrade Stalin.
Ah, yes: the judge-people-by-what-you-think-they-might-have-done-in-the-war game. How fair is that? Not fair at all but that’s what’s so enjoyable. A Jewish friend and I spend hours of fun cruelly speculating which of his gentile friends would have gone, ‘They’re next door, behind the attic partition, Herr Hauptsturmführer.’ Anyway, in the case of Brigstocke and Stalin I’m sure I’m dead on the nail. Have you ever heard him ‘joke’ on any subject whatsoever where he hasn’t taken the most tediously sanctimonious PC line? Bernard Manning? Sexist, racist and unfunny. Global warming? All our fault and people who disagree should be sent to Maoist re-education camps. CND? A worthwhile cause. Not without reason was this right-on smug-pants once christened ‘unfunniest arse in the universe’. He even appeared in Love Actually, for heaven’s sake.
What has this to do with Argumental? Well, really, the point I’m trying to make is more about TV panel comedy in general. It purports to come at us from a neutral position of balance and reasonableness, grounded — if we are to believe the subtext of that Argumental poster — in a misty-eyed, if gently tongue-in-cheek reverence for British history, British values, British tradition.
Yet predominantly it’s the work of people who’d happily coat every square inch of the glorious English countryside in wind farms (that’s you, Brigstocke), who loathe foxhunting (that’s you, Bill Bailey), who think they’re being so terribly daring jesting about girls in hijabs at Weightwatchers classes but are so liberal they still wouldn’t understand the problem with multiculturalism or Islamism if it came and sat next to them on a bus and blew them up (that’s you, Stewart Lee), who enjoy all the fruits of the market economy yet still feel it’s perfectly acceptable to flirt with the anarcho-syndicalist rioters who would smash all decent, civilised society to bits (yes, that’s you, beardie Brand filth).
You know what I think we should do? Build a time machine and send the whole bloody lot of them to Kohima. That would shut them up. Tossers.
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