“Memo: don’t put comedians on Question Time or any other serious political show,” tweeted the BBC’s former live politics editor Rob Burley on Sunday morning. “It’s not the time for that nonsense anymore.” Burley was not amused by the standup Joe Lycett’s appearance on the first-ever Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, which the Brummie sent up by pretending to be “incredibly rightwing”. Feigning enthusiastic support for the positions Liz Truss staked out in her interview with Kuenssberg, Lycett had co-panellist Emily Thornberry tittering, and the show’s host on a very uncertain footing, with an appearance that went on to dominate coverage of this launch of the BBC’s major new politics format.
Is that a travesty? Or – as Lycett’s many supporters would have it – a public service? “Here was something genuinely subversive,” in his fellow comedian Katy Brand’s words, “delivered so politely you could barely feel the blade until it was out.” The dividing lines were drawn, between those who feel that the seriousness of Kuenssberg’s show (at a very serious time) was undermined by Lycett’s prank, and those who see that prank as the most serious and morally responsible feature of the whole hour.
It comes down, perhaps, to what you want from your guest comedian. We’re living through an age where comics are ubiquitous, writing newspaper columns, fronting documentaries, governing war-torn countries and, yes, appearing on political discussion shows. The powers-that-be, the Rob Burleys of this world, may prefer those appearances to play by the rules of the media-political complex: a few witty remarks here, a few digestible convictions there, the applecart left unmolested. A mainstream satire industry exists to equip comedians with these skills, from Radio 4’s Now Show via (the late) Mock the Week and even including The Mash Report, which is often brilliant while tending to operate within the confines of what we recognise as satire. It draws a few gasps; it’s easily contained.
Lycett’s activist comedy tries to do something different – and more power to him for that. Watch the broadcast, and this latest Truss trolling feels more like a gambit than something fully realised: he doesn’t look sure that it’s working. But he’s got previous with this shtick: see his regular tweets geeing up Boris Johnson (“dont rise to it babe, im with nadine we r on ur side no matter what xoxox”), or indeed his hoax leaking of the Sue Gray report, which was in equal parts ridiculous and just about credible enough to get Whitehall knickers in a twist. Such is the satirical territory Lycett is staking out – not joking about our political reality but bodysnatching it. Insinuating himself into its cracks, to prise open some perspective on how appalling it’s become.
What comedian could do more? It’s been clear since at least the dawning of the current Conservative era that mainstream satire, with its urbane wit and complacent rationality, wasn’t fit for purpose, that political comedy was going to need new registers to measure up to the extremity of what we were facing. It’s been fascinating, as a critic, to watch that new satire being born – in Stewart Lee’s 2010 show, say, with its dreamy routine about schooling with David Cameron, in Bridget Christie’s rapid-response standup set about the Brexit vote, in Frankie Boyle’s coruscating monologues on New World Order, reaching for a scorched-earth idiom equal to the scorched-earth politics of our time. Or in Sarah Cooper’s Netflix special Everything’s Fine, a fever dream of the media-political maelstrom in which we’re all permanently aswirl.
Burley’s complaint against Lycett was that his antics eclipsed the real political content of Kuenssberg’s show – Truss’s contention, for example, that “it is fair” for the rich to profit from her proposed tax cuts. It’s possible to agree with that while congratulating the comedian for gesturing towards a more compelling – and equally political – point. Kuenssberg’s dialogue with Truss was a textbook example of all that is wrong with our current “journo-political stitch-up” (Brand’s words again). While British people stare down the barrel of appalling hunger and poverty, this interview was evasive, complacent (“Britain has been through worse in the past” – Truss), self-congratulatory, personality-focused (“You are about to become prime minister. Can you believe it?!” – Kuenssberg) and cloyingly clubbable.
With all the bombast and self-importance that Chris Morris mocked so ruthlessly 25 years ago in Brass Eye, these formats exist to make politicians seem like upright and substantial people. They have no way of accommodating the awkward fact that some of them, particularly since the Tory party turned into the Brexit party, are neither. Lycett’s uncomfortable nugget of performance art blew the gaff on that. It dissented from the pantomime that this is serious discourse. That’s why some commentators are demanding fewer comedians on political TV – and why the many of us think the comedians, at their best, are one of the few reasons to keep watching.
Brian Logan is the Guardian’s comedy critic
