Have I Got News For You was back last night for its 52nd series, with Nick Clegg hosting.
The targets of their satire were the usual ones. They spent six minutes mocking UKIP, a couple of minutes mocking Trump, a few seconds mocking Hillary, six minutes mocking the Tories, and then moved on to fish and global warming, Jamie Oliver and paella, plus lots and lots of bonus digs at Boris ("a buffoon") and Gove ("a total git").
Curiously, especially given the summer they've had, Labour got less than half a minute of (gentle) mockery (a joke at the start about Corbyn on the train and a joke about Ed Balls on Strictly at the end). Given the summer of madness Labour has had and stories last week like the Jackie Walker affair, you'd have surely expected a lot more.
Now, HIGNFY is recorded at 18.30 on Thursday evenings so that night's shadow cabinet reshuffle - came too late for it to mock, but next week's edition of HIGNFY will have more than enough material to mock Labour relentlessly for several minutes.
There are so many targets, from Mao-praising Diane Abbott (...DIANE ABBOTT!?!!...) being made shadow home secretary to the controversial appointment of newly-ennobled, only-recently-a-Labour-member Shami as shadow whitewasher general. They could also mock the new shadow housing minister John Healey for his various statements over the past few months...
“Labour must unite behind Jeremy Corbyn as long as he's leader”. 20.5.2016
“I have just hand-delivered Jeremy Corbyn my resignation letter”. 27.6.2016
“Any Leader has to take people with them. Shadow cabinet elections would help to establish a basis for this”. 24.9.2016
“Why I’m Rejoining Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet”. 7.10.2016
...and Ian Hislop could rage righteously over Jackie Walker remaining a member of Momentum's steering committee. Plus someone will surely have to mock Jeremy Corbyn's already-heavily-derided error-filled tweet:
We'll have to see whether any of this happens next week, of course.
In the meantime, the biggest and best laugh on last night's Have I Got News For You came with the Captions Competition and this image:
Kevin Bridges suggested "Big dog and little dog". It brought the house down, and rightly so. You probably had to be there though.
HIGNFY is satire?
ReplyDeleteAllegedly.
I like to wait for the extended version on Sunday, and shall watch then. Mocking Hillary even for a few seconds is infinitely more than they mocked The Obamessiah. The only jokes involving Him ever on the show was when they changed the opening animated sequence to show Him missing the basket. I don't count the later addition of Kim Jong-Il chasing Him on rocket as strictly mocking.
ReplyDeleteNo jokes about Baroness Shami of Whitewash? Her controversial titling happened weeks ago.
Well, come to think of it, it was more a Bill joke than a Hillary joke.
DeleteIt was dire. The BBC and the media in general languishes in a self-satisfied bubble, in which, across the board, resorting to false stereotyping passes as perceptive.
ReplyDeleteTherefore Trump is “a moron”, Farage is a “racist”, Boris is a “buffoon” and Brexit equals xenophobia. Not to mention the lazy generalisations and stereotypes they’ve created for Islam, Zionism, Israel and Jews.
They haven’t invented a derogatory stereotype for Labour yet. Admittedly the BBC recently revealed a slight bias against Corbyn, but Labour’s total implosion hasn’t yet filtered into the media’s consciousness enough to have acquired its own derogatory stereotype, e.g.totalitarian, despotic etc.
Ian Hislop is metamorphosing from Tintin to toby jug, and he’s started aping Paul Merton’s look of feigned incredulity, which is an embarrassment.
Mock The Week was even worse. Not one chuckle to be seen. Same trivial and tired old material. Of course that great authority on current affairs Andy Parsons wasn’t there.
Who’s in charge of comedy at the BBC? Seumas Milne?
“Big dog, little dog” was funny. (In context)
I didn’t watch HIGNFY, but I did hear The News Quiz. What a coward Jeremy Hardy is. How belligerent and acerbic he is when he believes himself to be surrounded by like-minded far left idiots (as he was last night), and how he shrinks into his shell when there is somebody on the panel who threatens to challenge his infantile worldview.
ReplyDeleteFinally had a moment to watch this now, and I have just lost all of the last modicum of respect I had for Ian Hislop. He has just told a classic BBC lie: that the Republicans blocked Obama for "eight years". Complete and utter lie. As everyone here knows, the Democrats had a super-majority for the first two years of His reign. Not a single bi-partisan vote was needed to ram through ObamaCare or the so-called 'Stimulus', which was essentially a near-trillion dollar re-distribution of wealth from future taxpayers to money-bundler, pet organizations, and Wall St.
ReplyDeleteIan Hislop is a liar, and it's sad for someone with decades of respect for Private Eye to say that.
I say it's a BBC lie because nearly every single Beeboid who ever mentioned The Obamessiah said at time or another something along the lines of how an intransigent Congress blocked His every move.
I'd write a complaint to the BBC, but since they're all in on the lie it won't go anywhere.