Have I Got Tigers For You

Just to promote a point made in the comment fields of an earlier thread....

This week's Have I Got News For You saw (Establishment lackey) anti-Establishment hero Ian Hislop making a suggestive remark about BBC bias. 

The first segment had focused its satirical mockery on Labour - which, to my mind, is quite unusual for the programme. 

Of course, all of that mockery focused personally on Jeremy Corbyn (which surprised me a good deal less). 

There then followed a short burst of mockery for Tim Farron over the gay sex thing.

And then came the utterly charming mockery of an 84-year old UKIP lady...a "would-be councillor in Glasgow". 

When they mock UKIP, even an 84-year-old woman who isn't even a councillor (and who only wants to be) is obviously fair game. 

Oh, how the audience laughed at her!

(Makes you proud to pay the BBC licence fee, doesn't it?)

At this point Ian began chomping at the bit to have a pop at the Tories, saying:

Are there no questions about the Conservatives at all? Is that the new BBC policy?

The typical metropolitan BBC comedy audience burst into huge applause and cheers. (They must be the same kind of people who tweet about the BBC being 'Tory' on Twitter).

Ian was being very helpful to the BBC there. ('Complaints From Both Sides' and all that.)

Kirsty Young, however, said that the Tories would get their share of the mockery soon enough - and so they did,...

(And they kept a little more till the very end when they did a 'Jacob Rees-Mogg is posh' joke.)

....as indeed they did the previous week when mocking of those very Tories dominated the first few minutes of the programme (with Ian in his element) and mockery of Jeremy Corbyn (personally) was a mere passing whim.

Still, I laughed quite a bit at this week's HIGNFY - especially at the statue of the tiger mascot of the Siliwangi Military Command in Indonesia. The police there had commissioned a statue to represent the fierce and noble beast which they'd chose to represent everything they stand for...

and this was it: 

When asked why did the statue didn't end up looking like the ferocious beast it was supposed to resemble, the police spokesman said it was because "the artist was not that good".


Update (h/t a reader): Now, for a truly fierce beast from an artist who is good, here's Percy Metcalfe’s magnificent Lion sculpted for the Palace of Industry at the British Empire Exhibition in 1924: