The Other Palace, London
Comedy’s rational surveyor of the political scene fires a centrist shot at easy targets from Boris Johnson to Jeremy Corbyn
The left/right divide is no longer a useful guide to interpreting modern Britain, Matt Forde tells us in Brexit Through the Gift Shop. The new distinction is: “Are you mad or not?” No guessing on which side of that divide Forde situates himself: the Unspun man is the least mad comedian imaginable, a rational surveyor of the political scene, impugning the sanity of everyone less sensible than he is.
The times, obviously, give him plenty of ammunition. Karen Bradley’s ignorance of Northern Ireland; Boris Johnson’s London-boroughs analogy for the Irish border issue – yes, these bespeak a deranged political moment. They’re also very well worn, comedically speaking. But this is Forde’s raw material, the stuff of the headlines: Dominic Raab’s Dover gaffe; Labour’s summer festival flop. Often, his jokes and his mimicry are very funny – when addressing Kate Osamor’s plagiarised speech, say, or the possibility of a 21st-century general strike. He’s good at illuminating policy by analogy, recasting Corbyn’s stance on Brexit as a visit to a cosmetic surgeon.
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