Now then, now then

Hugh impersonating me listening to this week's 'The Now Show' 

As ITBB's official Twitter correspondent (after Sue turned down the job), I've been checking out the social media reaction to this week's The Now Show for you. 

In the process I've discovered that some people find The Now Show very funny. One lady asked "How am I going to manage without #thenowshow  for the next few weeks?"

The jokes that got the Twitterati laughing included a mock Daily Mail headline ("Scientists discover a cocktail of coffee, red wine & walnuts will cause, prevent, worsen & cure cancer all at the same time") and two Archers jokes ("The Archers is basically Game of Thrones on a farm!" and "Ebola Titchener" as a potential name for an evil corporation).

Someone calling Brian Blessed "Shouty McShoutface" also raised a titter on Twitter, and another person thought the Smurf song about tax avoidance was "genius". 

Now, in the spirit of impartiality, I have also to report that others found it "UNFUNNY" and were prepared to use Caps Lock to make it clear just how "UNFUNNY" they found it. 

Oh, and a feminist organisation from Cheltenham tweeted "Do we know the whistleblower was a man? #defaultalwaysmale" after The Now Show used gender-specific language in connection with the blower of whistles in the Panama Papers affair.

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Leaving impartiality behind, I can't say The Now Show makes me howl with laughter very often. A few smiles and perhaps an odd snort of amusement usually does me for an entire episode (on a good day). 

The Jon Holmes bit about selfies was the highlight of this edition. He even had a gentle dig at the Guardian (after the obligatory Daily Mail joke, cited above): 

But it was in the interests of balance that I was leaving through recent Guardians this week. I stockpile them in case there's a wet-politically correct-holier than thou-liberal agenda shortage. And I came across this headline: "Are selfies empowering for women?"...to which, of course, the answer is: "No".  And that isn't sexist either because they're not empowering for anyone - man, woman, transgender, transguardian...which is someone who's had their genitals replaced by articles about climate change.

The rest was rather underwhelming.

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Masters of mirth

As for bias, I was writing this post when a comment came in:

Heard the Now Show on Radio 4 today. You know the ex comedy programme that is now insinuating a "news light" segment into the schedules that presumably bypasses all the BBC news standards and controls. Today they interviewed Luke Harding of - yes - The Guardian about the Panamanian Papers scandal. The banter almost took you to an Islington dining table where people were on the third bottle of wine after an excellent lunch, with all its lazy assumptions, shared safe space humour and signalled virtue. But wait, hang on, surely the fearless satirists of the Now Show wouldn't fail to point out the irony that the Guardian Media Group also used an offshore banking account for tax avoidance purposes? Er...too damn right they wouldn't. Pathetic.

It certainly was something of a 'congratulatory canoodling' between the BBC comics and the Guardian reporter, with no questions asked (or jokes cracked) about the Graun's own tax arrangements.

That interview was the stand-out instance of bias in the programme (not that I noticed it). The rest of the programme merely plodded through several routines which seemed to be studiously trying to avoid appearing biased - with peculiar results.

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It's really quite odd listening to The Now Show these days. You don't have to listen that carefully to hear the actual sound of a BBC pen ticking boxes for 'impartiality'. Thus, if The Now Show is going to tell around a dozen jokes at David Cameron's expense (as it did today) it must also crack a joke about Jeremy Corbyn (as it also did today). Jeremy Corbyn joke told, box duly ticked. (Not that they seem to have a problem cracking the odd Corbyn joke though.)

And the EU referendum song was so obviously fixed on avoiding making a serious point either for or against either side (and thus possibly getting the BBC into trouble for bias) that it fixed on personalities and forgot to be funny. It was as if a BBC compliance officer had been breathing down their necks, conscious that The Now Show has been singled out for attention by some watching the BBC for bias over the EU referendum.

And the opening Punt & Dennis routine on the Panama Papers was so studiously middle-of-the-road and laboured and tame that it must also have passed through several compliance checks and an anal probe before delivery.

Of course, if it had all been blatantly biased throughout I'd have been posting something about lefty Radio 4 comedians and the bloody biased BBC this afternoon instead.