I offer no comment.
With thanks to Matt
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It would be even funnier if it were not so close to certain truths about the Tory political class.
Really? 🙂
Mayall got the essence of the neo-liberal Tory -and it was a stroke of true comic genius-the sneer, the bogus nationalism (which was really globalisation), the hypocrisy the the nth degree.
Uncannily he managed to get himself to look like Norman Fowler – intentional?
The present B’astards can’t be taken off by comedians because they ARE parody in themselves.
I loved Rick Mayall’s portrayal of a Tory MP – shame he died so young. That and Spitting Image helped to keep me sane in those dreadful Tory years; badly need something similar for the current crowd.
Very interesting. Pity about his later defection to New Labour however.
Labour became B’astardised.
What’s shocking and sad is that at the time this was broadcast most people would have thought this degree of extreme right wing thinking, vanity and snobbishness was the fantasy we see here. Then along come the post 2010 bunch of Tories and we realise it isn’t fantasy after all.
it wasn’t fantasy then, Ivan-think if characters like Cecil Parkinson, sneering, self-seeking yobs who looked like they had a turd hanging from there noses, utterly self-obsessed who would have privatised every last jot and tyttle in Britain. Mayall’s B’astard was barely satire but rather depiction.
And here we are in 2016 still strangled by the grip of this crap where M.P’s don’t even bother tp pretend they are not shysters and wide boys/girls. The public takes it for granted they are and still votes’em in as it were ‘the way of the world (shoulder shrug)’.
I think Parkinson was the target
Yes – really!
I have spent the last few days driving around Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire and I’ve been struck by how many ‘Vote Leave’ banners I’ve seen in streets and country lanes. It’s rather worrying. The black dogs are circling. There is little to be merry about.
Jolyon has just released a comment on his blog on the likelihood of our status as a tax haven being increased if we leave and the possible consequences to ordinary folk if we do.
I never liked Mayall’s character B’stard because he was too convincing as I find such people appalling.
What is worse now is that (1) people in certain parties actually behave like B’stard anyway and think that it is natural and (2) I cannot separate that character from what the real people who behave like B’stard have done to people’s lives in the last 6 years in this country.
The funniest thing for me on this post is Demeterius’ comment. But even that is full of tragedy when you think of it.
At work a lot of people are wanting to vote leave because of immigration. They don’t get that the same person who has held their wage increase to 1% for the last 6 years and has just hiked up their NI contributions and thus wiped out those rises is telling them that their wages will drop if they vote leave.
They blame the EU for the drop in their wages.
Not the Government who will not use its sovereignty to regulate markets and minimum wages and promote trade unions.
I love satire as much as anyone else.
But when satire becomes reality and you and the people you know now seem to be a part of it and hurt by it – then you know we are all in trouble.
I’m increasengly convvinced we are going to vote for destitution & slavery.
I’ve told my boys they MUST learn German & some Mandarin because this country is, to put it kindly, 2222ed.
Eriugenus-if you think Germany is any better, think again-it is in the grip of neo-liberalism ion steroids and it’s famed trade surplus is on the back of the ‘precariat’ jut like here. The German word for Job Centre is ‘Job Centre’ and the rest follows suit with regular humiliation of unemployed being harassed and forced into work whose wages cannot be lived off. You are treated as if you were Greek.
To paraphrase Mephistopheles in Dr. Faustus:
“Neo-liberalism hath no limits, nor is it circumscribed”
And nobody mentioned immigration. Perhaps Mr Farridge (it does rhyme with garridge where I come from) thought this was an inadequately-framed training video as he considered his “second career”.
Would that the BBC was brave enough to satirise politics like that today…
John Politics HAS BECOME satire. We need only see the original version!