Wet wipe

Heavy sarcasm can be a debilitating affliction. The heavy sneer throws into question the meaning of what is being said. It turns a mundane observation on its head and makes the benign sound sinister. Someone once did a sketch where they forgot how to switch sarcasm off; they could never ever say anything nice. 

‘Yeah right’ means ‘No, not at all.’ We know that. Psychology Today says ‘sarcasm is actually hostility disguised as humor.’ With Charlie Brooker it’s undisguised hostility attempting to be humour. Sometimes it is funny and sometimes it ain’t . The puns were funny. 

When he started on the topic of Charlie Hebdo and ‘Je Suis Charlie’, it was hard to tell whether he intended it as sarcasm, humour, neither or both. It was a segue, nay, an hords d’oeuvre before the main course. 

I found the main course reheated, overdone and unfunny. I won’t be leaving a tip.  Fox News and The Daily Mail are the wrong ingredients for originality. Too stale and pretty tasteless. Targeting them is not funny any more, even if it once was, which I doubt. 

As ‘fuck’ was to Billy Connolly, Fox News is to BBC comedy; worn-out and not fit for purpose. No longer reliable for a laugh. It looks like Charlie Brooker’s role as the BBC’s enfant terrible is in the past. Now he’s in danger of trailing behind Marcus Brigstocke. 

There was one very funny part of the Fox news affair, which was the expression on the face of the host, Judge Jeanine Pirro. Her cross-eyed astonishment was lol, but Brooker seemed to miss it.

“Some commentators weren’t just concerned with Islamic terrorism but wanted to condemn the whole of Islam claiming that the "Islamification of Europe” had gone too far” sarked Brooker, putting “Islamification of Europe” in vocal inverted commas as if he thought that was even more laughable a concept than commentators being concerned with Islamic terrorism.

“It’s time we drew a veil over that then removed the veil and banned it” sarked Brooker, taking a dig at the French and anyone else who had ever contemplated banning the veil. 

“Birmingham is a no-go city” and “The Muslim Police” mocked Charlie. Let’s have a laugh at “the idiot-American-man-who-knew-no better,” continued Charlie, even though pressure had long ago forced ‘said idiot’ to make a very public, shamefaced, over the top climb down, which gave Charlie Brooker and all the other comedians who've done this topic to death an excuse for acting as though such allegations are so far-fetched and stupid that ridiculing them would pass for humorous entertainment.