Tracey vs Corbyn - seconds out!
TRACEY BREAKS THE NEWS BBC1, TONIGHT, 9.30PM
TO many people, Tracey Ullman will always be a pub quiz question – on which TV show did The Simpsons first appear?
As it happens, she has enjoyed a nigh on 30-year career as a comedian and while her output down the decades may have been mixed, to say the least, she has some serious comedy credentials.
What many people didn’t expect, however, was that her series of impressions on Tracey Breaks The News (BBC1, tonight, 9.30pm) would become so controversial.
In fairness, her impression of Jeremy Corbyn is one of those things that derives laughter from the familiarity of the face rather than the quality of the material.
Yet it has also managed to spawn one of the weirdest conspiracy theories in ages.
Her skits about Corbyn trying to prove that he’s not the anti-Semite he’s portrayed as has led to some half-decent, but still fairly gentle, jokes – but Corbynistas have gone as mad as you would expect from such a bunch of humourless dolts.
It says a lot for today’s younger, hipper satirists that it’s taken a woman who has been doing comedy since before most of them were born to get under the skin of the Labour leader – and that’s an indictment on them as much as compliment to her.
Ah, but where’s the conspiracy theory, I hear you ask?
Well, in their desire to tell everyone that the modern Labour Party isn’t actually a seething cauldron of anti-Semitic nutters, Corbyn’s fans were quick to accuse David Baddiel of writing the Corbyn sketches – simply because he’s Jewish and, goes the subtext, we all know what they’re like, right?
As it happens, Baddiel had nothing to do with that material and has expressed bafflement that people would automatically assume a skit having a fairly soft joke at their Dear Leader’s expense was obviously written by a Jewish comedian, even when it turns out it wasn’t.
Tracey Breaks The News is more interesting than funny, but no doubt there is one person who is lapping up all this Corbyn controversy – Tracey Ullman herself...
From one tough old broad to another, tomorrow brings us Germaine Bloody Greer (BBC2, Saturday, 9pm).
Currently in the news for some rather bizarre comments about rape, the veteran contrarian has always been a captivating presence who can both amaze and appal – frequently in the same sentence.
In a sure sign that the world has turned on its head, this pioneering feminist is now hated by younger feminists, which is something she probably finds quite amusing.