Even if you didn't watch it I bet you can already guess what tonight's Have I Got News For You was like.
Its guest presenter, panel and audience united in grief and bitter fury at the election of Donald Trump.
It was like last night's Question Time with fewer laughs.
Paul Merton pulled faces. Ian Hislop pulled faces. Maureen Lipman was aghast. Charlie Brooker sneered. And Rich Hall was so depressed he ritually disembowelled himself midway through one of Paul's Toblerone jokes.
Still, you'll doubtless be delighted to hear that The Donald wasn't the only political target for HIGNFY's (moaning) satire. For balance, they included several other targets:
Nigel Farage
The Daily Mail
UKIPers
Nigel Farage
Liz Truss
Jeremy Corbyn
Nigel Farage
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Prince Philip
...with closing bonus jokes about Trump, Putin and UKIP supporters.
How the studio audience laughed! 'Ha ha ha ha ha', they went (though not so much at the Jeremy Corbyn jokes).
P.S. The Twitter reaction consisted of (a) lots and lots of people complaining about HIGNFY having a Trump-hating, lefty bias, (b) the usual Corbynistas complaining that HIGNFY has an anti-Corbyn bias and, as a result, (c) quite a few people echoing the following sentiment:
No it doesn't. If anything, it shows that HIGNFY is betraying BBC impartiality by mocking from a consistent, soggy, centre-Left position against both the Right and the far-Left. (Why is this so hard a concept for some people to understand?)
That some doughty BBC defenders (who, when you click on their Twitter feeds, turn out to share identical/almost identical, soft-Left views) are claiming this episode of HIGNFY as evidence of 'BBC impartiality' tells its own story, and is much funnier that most of tonight's HIGNFY.
P.S. The Twitter reaction consisted of (a) lots and lots of people complaining about HIGNFY having a Trump-hating, lefty bias, (b) the usual Corbynistas complaining that HIGNFY has an anti-Corbyn bias and, as a result, (c) quite a few people echoing the following sentiment:
No it doesn't. If anything, it shows that HIGNFY is betraying BBC impartiality by mocking from a consistent, soggy, centre-Left position against both the Right and the far-Left. (Why is this so hard a concept for some people to understand?)
That some doughty BBC defenders (who, when you click on their Twitter feeds, turn out to share identical/almost identical, soft-Left views) are claiming this episode of HIGNFY as evidence of 'BBC impartiality' tells its own story, and is much funnier that most of tonight's HIGNFY.
HIGNFY - Tired format, long-in-the-tooth panelists, left-wing content, thoroughly predictable - what's to not like if you're a BBC programme commissioner? For the rest of us, just more of the same diet from the BBC.
ReplyDeleteI hazily remember when it was properly satirical and a "must watch" ... although to be honest Hislop was never very funny and always prone to self-righteousness. I don't watch it much now, but the last time a few weeks ago I heard Hislop defending the "child migrants" as being just aged from experience. Then it was obvious the whole idea of satire had been dropped, and the program just another virtual signalling opportunity for overpaid lazy has beens.
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