Divisive, chaotic and with implications for almost every aspect of national life, Brexit has been a godsend for political satirists — giving them a wealth of material — and audiences desperate for a laugh.
“There’s a voracious appetite in the UK for anything to do with Brexit, and there’s a huge appetite for satire,” said Neil Rafferty, editor in chief of the popular satirical Web site The Daily Mash.
“It’s a massive subject. There’s also a massive number of colorful characters involved. There are some very extreme views, which are great for satirists,” he said.
Britons have a long tradition of turning to humor in troubled times, and the June referendum vote to leave the EU has inspired comedians across the country — even if most of them opposed the decision.
“When it comes to writing jokes, this referendum outcome is a better one,” comedian Al Murray, who adopts the persona of a xenophobic pub owner, told the Guardian.
Satirical magazine Private Eye is enjoying record sales of 230,000 copies every two weeks, while Twitter and the Internet are alive with Brexit-related gags.
“Well, I fucked that up, didn’t I?” read the headline of one Daily Mash story about former British prime minister David Cameron, who resigned after his campaign to keep Britain in the EU.
Another poked fun at the insistence that Britain will be better off outside the European single market, with the headline: “Australia ideal trading partner, say Britons happy to wait three months for stuff.”
Comedy can also help Britons deal with some of the darker issues thrown up by Brexit, including reports of an increase in hate crime after a referendum campaign dominated by immigration.
“Brexit raised a lot of tensions, some of them racial, a lot of them political,” said Steve Bennett, editor of comedy industry Web site Chortle. “I think comedy is an important tool in smoothing over that.”
One Friday night in the Comedy Cafe in east London, a stand-up comedian asked the crowd if anyone likes gaffe-prone British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Boris Johnson, a leading Brexit campaigner.
When one hapless audience member tentatively raised his hand, he was treated to a barrage of jokes at his — and Johnson’s — expense.
Most comedians were among the 48 percent of voters who opposed Brexit in the referendum, but the jokes are also flowing from the other side of the political divide.
“Straight after the vote happened, a lot of my friends were saying ‘well, thank you very much, leavers, now we are going to have a future with no money or human rights,’” said stand-up Geoff Norcott, who backed Brexit.
“And I was thinking — no, we are leaving the EU, not joining North Korea. Let’s just turn down the rhetoric a little bit. But it’s that hysteria that makes it funny,” he said.
“We’ll laugh until we are really poor. And then we’ll laugh for different reasons. Because laughing is better than crying,” he said.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has repeatedly refused to outline her negotiating strategy for talks with the EU, saying only that “Brexit means Brexit.”
The phrase has been widely mocked for being meaningless, while clips of politicians inadvertently saying “breakfast” instead of “Brexit” have brought a surreal aspect to posturings on Britain’s future.
However, for some comics such as singer-songwriter Mitch Benn, who has lived in France and Spain, the jokes cannot disguise their anger at the situation.
“Saying ‘Brexit means Brexit’ is a meaningless statement because it’s like saying, ‘Argulfoop means Argulfoop,’” Benn said. “It’s a word you’ve just made up and you’ve said that it means what it says it does. We’ve no idea where we’re at or what we’re doing.”
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
RSS