Sunday 19 February 2017

Private Eyes



This morning's Broadcasting House made for a pleasant listen, as ever.

This week's Slow Listen feature (minus any sighing) featured a minute's worth of the sound of a steam train in motion (along the magical Settle-to-Carlisle railway). I'd have happily scrapped The Archers for a full hour of it.

The paper review featured Britain's only Conservative-supporting comedian - his phrase! He was quite funny, and certainly much funnier than Vince Cable.

The big interview of the day was with Ian Hislop of Private Eye, in the wake of the apparent eruption of satire (mainly Saturday Night Live) since Donald Trump became president. 

Paddy kept telling us how well the magazine is doing, sales-wise - especially since Brexit and Trump. And Ian sounded as pleased as (Punch) punch about that.

Paddy did disagree with Ian a bit. Paddy (being Radio 4) suggested that satire is predominantly left-wing. (Listening to Radio 4 comedy, who could blame him for thinking that?). Ian said that's not actually true and that satire is, in fact, inherently conservative (with a small 'c'). 

Paddy also raised the following concern: 
If we come home, do you think that the Conservative Party have been given a free pass, in the sense that there's been a lot of focus on the Labour Party's divisions, but David Cameron has run off to the Cotswolds. He called the In-Out referendum. Boris Johnson was stabbed in the face by Michael Gove. And yet the attention of the media, pretty much, has been on the Labour Party. Is that fair?
All I can say is that Paddy mustn't have been watching Have I Got News For You very often!

2 comments:

  1. Comedians are too busy bashing Trump and Brexit to bother with the non-entity May.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Explaining her ratings, just like when Ed was blanked for a while.

      Labour must be praying for the BBC to recall which country is in their name.

      Delete

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