It was the political prank so audacious you could hear the laughter, and the drawn breath, from the other side of the Atlantic: in May this year, within a week of the Uvalde school shooting, Jason Selvig of stunt-comedy duo The Good Liars stood up at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston, Texas, fixed its chief executive Wayne LaPierre in the eye, and thanked him for all the “thoughts and prayers” his organisation had offered over decades of mass murder. “If we give enough of these thoughts and these prayers, these mass shootings will stop,” deadpanned Selvig, as LaPierre faced him down with a gimlet stare. The gun-lovin’ crowd shifted awkwardly in their seats.
Here was a prank for the ages. But also one to make you wonder: whither the great British prank, as practised with distinction by the Mark Thomases and Chris Morrises of yore? Or by Sacha Baron Cohen, who recently successfully defended a $95m lawsuit against a Republican ex-senator identified by a “paedophile detector” on Baron Cohen’s 2018 show Who Is America? We have Joe Lycett, of course, heroically changing his name to Hugo Boss and leaking spoof Sue Gray reports to a panicked parliament. But “we need more of them,” says Simon Brodkin, one of the art form’s celebrated exponents. “We need them when anyone starts taking themselves too seriously. Who the hell wants pomposity ruling the world?”
