This evening's The Unbelievable Truth wasn't exactly a laugh a minute, or even every ten minutes. (I managed about two laughs in total.) Even the studio audience seemed underwhelmed by the humour on offer tonight. (There were even a few tumbleweed moments.)
Still, it gave me the chance to play 'Radio 4 Comedians Bingo' - a delightful game where you always use the same card marked with the words 'Daily Mail', 'bankers', 'Gove', 'Osborne', 'Cameron', 'Old Etonians', 'Bullingdon', 'UKIP', 'Farage', 'Daily Mail', 'NHS', 'xenophobia/racism', 'Putin', 'Palin/Bush/U.S. Republicans', 'Rupert Murdoch', 'Melanie Phillips/Peter Hitchens', 'Christians', 'Israel' and 'Daily Mail'. ('Daily Mail' occurs three times because just having it once would be far too easy, given how often Radio 4 comedians have a go at it).
All you have to do to play the game is to mark each of them off whenever a Radio 4 comedian has a go at them.
It's obviously very hard to get a full house on a single show - has it ever happened? - but playing the game can add sparkle to even the dullest Radio 4 6.30 comedy show. You may wish to play it yourselves sometime.
Tonight's The Unbelievable Truth had digs at Eton, Old Etonian "bastards" in the government, Michael Gove, the government's NHS reforms, Jeremy Hunt, British xenophobia and, inevitably, 'The Daily Mail', allowing me to mark off five items on my bingo card. (It helped that Marcus Brigstocke was on.)
The bingo card has a reverse side, but it's so rarely used that most people forget about it. It features the alternative Lefty Twitter Users' version of Radio 4 Comedians Bingo.
This is marked with the words 'The Guardian', 'environmentalists', 'global warming', 'Miliband', 'Harman','Labour', 'Huhne','The EU', 'Obama', 'Muslims', 'Arabs', 'terrorists', 'Owen Jones/Polly Toynbee', 'mass immigration', 'The BBC' and 'Radio 4 Comedians'.
Lefty Twitter Users scored nothing tonight.
Carried on into Newsnight.
ReplyDeleteFollowing on from the BBCs puff pieces on Tony Robinson(an actor, and no Labour Party mention whatsoever) yesterday, we had Paxman sniffing about the Daily Mail and WW! history being "waded into by Gove"...usual crap.
Newsnight had two liberal lefty historians by way of a debate...no Starkey, Roberts, Ferguson allowed here then.
Both McMillan and Evans are well-known hired hands and opposed to Gove...so we got a pincer movement and no insights whatsoever.
The BBC are despicable at times-and their co-called comedy slot is anything but...save perhaps for the occasional "Clare in the Community" show I hear.