Tonight:
4°c
To the London Weekend Television studios to record an episode of Have I Got News for You. The production runner, as is their wont, reminded me as he showed me to my dressing room that I was the long-running show's most frequent guest, with 10 appearances notched up over the past decade or so. Sadly, I think last week's was my last.
In its heyday HIGNFY was in the very cockpit of British satire: a prototype kind of reality TV in which unwitting politicians were parachuted into a jungle full of backbiting repartee. The combination of a witty dissection of the week's current events and an opportunity for viewers to see their rulers - or wannabe rulers - excoriated in front of a live studio audience was a must-see, and for some years the programme formed part of the political discourse, as well as provoking myriad belly laughs.
The show's regular panellists, Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, remain just as funny, and as committed to cocking a snook at the Establishment as they ever were, but inevitably, age and success have mellowed them. It's difficult to believe in them as angry young men, when they're so manifestly middle-aged and rather comfortable men. It's hard to credit them as effectively wielding what is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful, when they're so clearly part of an elite.
Meanwhile, the political class has got wise to the show's format. No serving or aspiring politician can "win" HIGNFY; the best they can hope for is to not lose. If, like Boris Johnson, they succeed in making a TV audience laugh, they're never going to be regarded as truly serious ever again. If Johnson loses next year's mayoral election, it will be HIGNFY that did it for Ken.
I'm afraid that without the reality element, the programme has become just like any other pseudo-panel contest, where funny fellows sit behind desks cracking jokes. Moreover, in the post-Hutton era, the BBC seems to have lost its bottle so far as edgy satire is concerned: the sharpest crack I made all evening - and the one that received the most audience laughter - was cut for transmission.
I'd like to think there's some other TV show that's taking up the satiric mantle once sported by HIGNFY and by other programmes before it, stretching all the way back to the revelation of That Was The Week That Was in the 1960s, but sadly I doubt this is the case. On the one hand there is the Balkanisation of television itself, which means that no one programme can ever attract quite such high ratings; on the other hand there's politics itself. The American writer Hunter Thompson once said that satire became impossible when reality itself was too twisted - and I fear that's become the case.
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Reader views (5)
Bring back "Absolute Power"!
- Bliss, Brooklyn, NY, 04/12/2008 19:11
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Comedy can be comedy without being risqué. I simple think that HIGNFY has altered it's comedy over the years, and is just as funny now as it ever has been.
I would however, hope that the BBC does regain some edge every now and again - sometimes that can just top off an excellent night's comedy.
- Oliver, Liverpool, 22/01/2008 10:43
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Have I Got News For You is consistently funny. Merton and Hislop maintain a fantastic rapport, I think they are our country's best satirists and I don't think the seven million viewers of Have I Got News For You are at all wrong.
- Jim, Manchester, 08/12/2007 22:05
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I was present for the recording of the show.
The big laugh he refers to came in response to a smutty and shocking comment he made about Labour donor David Abrahams.
As a long-time fan, I think Have I Got News For You goes from strength to strength.
- Maurice, Farnham, England, 04/12/2007 15:51
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Agree so much well done for saying so.
I watched last night and thought the very same thing ...this show is finished so limp and tired.
I thought warmly of Harry Thompson and wondered what he would have thought of it.
- J Eccles, London, 04/12/2007 15:07
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