Satirical quiz turns toothless
NADINE Dorries, the Tory MP who is not what you’d call a shrinking violet has complained that the BBC TV news quiz Have I Got News For You (HIGNFY) “does not lend itself to women being comfortable”. She say she would never appear on it again because “I find it too vicious, too abrasive”.
HIGNFY, which began in 1990 when Mrs Thatcher was still prime minister, used to be essential viewing but I never liked it as much after sardonic smoothie Angus Deayton left over that cocaine-sex-prostitute shock horror in 2002. The comic seam is mined to exhaustion now which is hardly surprising after nearly 30 years.
The two team leaders Ian Hislop and Paul Merton often look bored stiff and as though they’re going through the motions. But it is now the rule that everything in the #MeToo world must have a gender disparity angle. So if Nadine doesn’t feel “comfortable” there will be hell to pay.
Though who feels comfortable on TV anyway? I’m sure you get used to it eventually but my few appearances on the telly have felt about as comfortable as a bed of nettles.
Meanwhile on HIGNFY Hislop and Merton slip comfortably into their roles like two old men easing into well-worn slippers. Everyone else is there for them to sharpen their wits upon.
No wonder women think twice about appearing on the show as either a host or a panellist. Merton told the Radio Times: “The producers always ask more women than men but more women say ‘No’.”
Hislop added that women are “slightly more reticent, and think, maybe modestly, ‘I can’t do that’”. It pains me to say it but I think Hislop is probably right. But, honestly, the boys v girls issue is the least of HIGNFY’s problems. Satirical comedy is supposed to prick pretensions, laugh at the powerful and expose their weaknesses. It’s about the underdog having a pop at his masters using comedy as a weapon.
Much of the fun of this news quiz lies (or at any rate used to lie) in this. But now the jokers on Have I Got News for You are the liberal elite who are in charge anyway. They’re not brave or daring at all. This is toothless satire which comes straight from the cheerleaders for the status quo. You used to feel that the people on HIGNFY got away with things. But now all that sense of irreverence has gone.
So much easier to merely take a pop at the Tories to win a round of applause from the clapping, honking seals in the audience.
Rather than make HIGNFY more lady-friendly (how awful that would be) I reckon it’s time to put it out of its misery.