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How Europe Stole My Mum review – nothing short of a Brexit miracle

Kieran Hodgson and Liza Tarbuck offer up a rare treat indeed – the only thing that has managed to make me laugh about Brexit

On paper, it’s enough to send you running for the hills. A show about Brexit – pull on your trainers – a young comedian’s examination of its 60s and 70s origins – lace them tight – via impressions of politicians from that era, and you’re off, racing across the greensward, bug-eyed in horror. “Come back!” people might shout. “The conceit is he wants to rebuild his relationship with his leave-voting mother!” “Never!” you reply, without a second thought. “Never!”

And this, as with so much to do with Brexit, would be wrong. For the show is How Europe Stole My Mum (Channel 4) and it is really, really good. Odd, unexpected, not for everyone, perhaps, any more than any comedy ever is, but fresh, charming and funny. It succeeded in something I had long believed unfeasible: it made me laugh if not exactly about Brexit then in very close proximity to it – an achievement so near to impossible that the mirthful noises emerging from my breast amounted almost to a miracle.

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