The Observer - 25.08.2019

The Observer

25.08.19 5

Laughing all the way

to the food bank...

H

ello, I’ll be standing in for David

Mitchell this week, and Stewart Lee

next. I’d like to apologise for this in

advance: regular readers of this column

have become used to scintillating

satire from these two, delivered via

crisp, witty prose. What do I have to offer in return?

Nothing but grim jeremiads about the dreadful state

we’re in – and pretentious, jargon-laden analyses about

how we got here. True, I too was once a well-known

light entertainer on national television, but in recent

years I’ve fallen victim to the worst character trait of

the ageing farceur: a desire to be taken ... seriously – an

inclination that has, quite rightly, coincided with my

gently smelly slide down into Stygian obscurity.

Bobbing about down here, I’ve begun to suspect that

my status in our septic, MRSA-ridden isle exists in an

inverse correlation to that of Her Highness’s current

fi rst minister. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that,

in search of his destiny as “world king ”, Boris Johnson

turned to television to build his base, and in particular

to the satirical news show Have I Got News for You.

Throughout a number of barnstorming appearances,

Johnson cemented his reputation as a charming and

self-deprecating Old Etonian, whose tousled blond

mop nonetheless surmounted a mind like a steel trap.

Even at the time, commentators remarked on how

bizarre it was that serving politicians were prepared

to go on the show and risk being eviscerated by their

fellow panellists – however, by perfecting his routine

(in Marxist terms, his “praxis ”), Johnson enacted the

dialectical relation between politics and comedy that has

since typifi ed our era.

Yes, think of Johnson not as man but a sort of

personifi ed synthesis: one between the high-minded

politics of old and the cachinnating prejudices of the

new bigots. And, of course, he’s not alone in this –

true, comedy was only a sideline for Johnson, but for

Italy’s Beppe Grillo , and now Ukraine’s Volodymyr

Zelenskiy , one-liners have become party ones. Then

there’s Marjan Šarec , in Slovenia , and Jimmy Morales ,

in Guatemala , both former comedians who abandoned

their shtick in favour of the slapstick of governance.

Just how good any of these characters were as comics

is debatable – I suppose you had to be there and then,

rather than here and now, since none of them has been

doing terribly well at the notoriously unfunny business

of making life-and-death decisions concerning your

fellow human beings.

In the long dark night of my soul, when I’ve failed

to surf that wave of illegal melatonin into even the

lightest of slumbers, disturbing visions throng my

mind: I imagine a summit convened by that prime-time

joker-in- chief Donald “the Donald ” Trump. Around

the polished oval stage in the Oval Offi ce, sit Messrs

Johnson, Zelenskiy et al , all rocking and rolling with

laughter as they carve the world’s audience up between

them. But if superannuated comedians are our new

rulers, perhaps we’ve only ourselves to blame? Did

we not laugh too readily at their feeble quips, thereby

propelling them into offi ce? At this year’s Edinburgh

fringe, the funniest joke award went to this one, by

the hilariously named comedian Olaf Falafel: “I keep

randomly shouting out ‘broccoli’ and ‘caulifl ower ’ – I

think I may have fl orets. ”

Frankly, if I’d been on hand to heckle when Falafel

threw up this little ball of wit, I’d have shouted “Fuck

you, you fucking shitting wanking fuck, you’re about

as funny as fucking fuck-all – what makes people with

Tourette’s ripe for your alleged ‘humour ’? Are there

other disabled folk you’d like to have a go at while

you’re up there? ” Thereby exhibiting the rank hypocrisy

of those of us who aren’t so much woke as utterly

insomniac. But even setting the prejudice to one side,

Falafel’s joke is a pretty tired bit of punning. Nietzsche

quipped that “Wit is the epitaph of an emotion” but,

even as epitaphs go, puns are a grave old business.

I

do hope Messrs Mitchell and Lee will be using

their downtime to re-up on their material – so

you can look forward to hearty chuckles in

the autumn, when broccoli and caulifl ower

become too expensive even for Observer readers.

But my suspicion is that they may, in fact, be

moonlighting as premiers themselves, while you have to

put up with my second-division repartee.

This rather raises the question: what might life be like

in a country helmed by a genuinely funny comedian,

rather than a farceur who dreams of being taken

seriously? In “Leedonia”, I imagine our Führer arriving

in his trademark circus car, accompanied by a posse of

heavily armed clowns. Speeches would take the form of

tightly scripted hour-long rants fusing the surreal, the

paranoid and the scatological with such elan (and dog-

whistle virtue-signalling) that the poor citizenry would

be left undone, having been chafed unmercifully by the

rubbing of their urine-soaked clothing against their

heaving bellies. What matter that they be empty of food,

if they’re fi lled with guffaws?

As for David Mitchell, with his bearded and bookish

mien, it’s not hard to picture him as some sort of nerd-

in-chief, earnestly urging his encyclopaedic knowledge

on his people. Perhaps, like the one-time dictator of

Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov , Mitchell will

write an interminably long book aimed at the spiritual

guidance of the people. There’s a huge mechanical

statue of the Ruhnama – as it’s called – in Ashgabat , the

capital, and, at 8pm every day, this opens mechanically

and a passage is read through loudspeakers. But

whereas Niyazov mixed together the Qur’an, Sufi poetry

and his own wild cosmic speculations , Mitchell’s tome

will consist of page after page of unbelievable truths,

and the mechanical voice reading them out will be nasal

and laconic.

I do hope something like this is actually going on

right now – and that, in a fortnight’s time, revitalised,

Mitchell’s and Lee’s satiric armies will invade Britain and

put paid to its new farceur-among-equals with volleys

of perfectly aimed pasquinades. Because, let’s face it, the

alternative isn’t funny at all.

Will

Self

Illustration

by

David

Foldvari

What

would

life be like

in a

country

helmed

by a

genuinely

funny

comedian?