Never mind Brexit, EU spats are fun

DEAR Editor, The puzzling inclination of some modern-generation comedians to function as a kind of extra arm for the “Stop Brexit” movement has led them into a quite shameful neglect of the rich vein of humour offered by the European Parliament and the personalities who gravitate around it.

WS Gilbert would certainly have found it a source of innocent merriment, although it is doubtful if even he would have dared to invent a Herman Van Rompuy or a Guy Verhofstadt, in name and personality so far removed from the realm of credibility.

Nonetheless, he would certainly have celebrated the fun to be found in the regular spats between vice president Mairead McGuinness and Nigel Farage, seeing Ms McGuinness as an old-time school ma’am, with fingers seemingly itching for a stout cane to administer condign punishment to bad boy Farage.

Not least in this Euro gallery of fun-providers is Elmar Brok (my personal favourite), who appears to be in a perpetual state of scarcely suppressed fury. His striking resemblance to the commandant of Stalag 17 is, I am sure, entirely coincidental, but should ensure him a leading role in any revival of ’Allo, ’allo!

Such personalities as these, I submit, provide living proof that our prolonged stay in the European Union has not been quite the saga of unrelieved misery that it is widely and convincingly represented to be.

Barrie Francis, Selly Oak, Birmingham