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ON THIS MONTH: COMEDY<br />
The Treason Show<br />
<strong>2016</strong>: good for satire, bad for the world<br />
“It’s as if some cosmic wishing<br />
spell has been cast over<br />
The Treason Show, and that<br />
things that I wonder about<br />
start happening,” says the<br />
satirist Mark Brailsford. “If I<br />
had the mindset of a fascist<br />
dictator, I would imagine<br />
that it was me controlling<br />
events to my advantage. It’s<br />
almost like that. Everything<br />
I’m dreaming of happening,<br />
for the comedy value, is<br />
happening.<br />
“I’ve been… running to<br />
stand still is an understatement.<br />
Running to go backwards,<br />
actually - it felt like<br />
I was just running backwards. You couldn’t keep<br />
up. One month - the Brexit month - it changed<br />
every hour, let alone daily. When even the 24-<br />
hour news channels were struggling to keep up…<br />
we were all just, ‘oh my god, that’s changed, that’s<br />
changed’. When Gove knifed Boris, we junked 20<br />
pieces of comedy in five minutes, in the rehearsal.<br />
“For the best-of-<strong>2016</strong> Christmas show, my problem<br />
is going to be ‘which bits’? At the moment<br />
I could probably do twelve best-ofs, with all the<br />
material we’ve had.”<br />
For example, this year we saw a prime minister<br />
make “the biggest miscalculation of any political<br />
career since Suez. He’ll be remembered along<br />
the lines of, ‘I have in my hands a piece of paper’,<br />
when Chamberlain was standing on the plane<br />
steps - a gag we used.”<br />
The referendum fallout has been so fruitful, in<br />
terms of satirical songs, that “we could do Brexit:<br />
the Musical. And actually, I dare say that might<br />
happen”. Brailsford also mentions “the Labour<br />
Party civil war”, and the rise<br />
of an American politician who<br />
is effectively “a big button<br />
marked ‘laugh’.<br />
“You only have to say what<br />
he’s really saying and boil it<br />
down to a sentence, and you<br />
get the laugh, just for the pure<br />
ridiculousness of… not hearing<br />
it from his mouth, you really<br />
hear it, rather than see the<br />
bombast and the comb-over<br />
floating around. It’s almost too<br />
easy, actually. You just have to<br />
say what he says.”<br />
Compared with the last days<br />
of the coalition, “when it all<br />
felt a bit… fag ends of everything”,<br />
<strong>2016</strong> has been a great year for satire. But,<br />
Brailsford says, “it is that thing of satire - anything<br />
that’s good for satire is bad for the world.”<br />
Will 2017 be better? “Yeah, for comedy, definitely.<br />
For the world, no. You’ve got Putin creating<br />
Cold War 2.0, the Americans and Nato generally<br />
reappraising their relationship with Russia…<br />
there is now a new Cold War front, I think, and<br />
it’s messier and more dangerous than it ever was<br />
in the old Cold War. And you’ve got all the fall<br />
out of what will be the collapse of Isil, terrorists<br />
fanning out across Europe, scare stories in the<br />
right-wing press, general mayhem in political<br />
spheres, with the independence vote in Scotland.<br />
You’re going to get Brexit mess everywhere. It’s<br />
worse for the world, but it’s comedy gold for us.”<br />
(NB: This interview was done in late October,<br />
when Trump’s victory in the election looked<br />
highly unlikely.) Steve Ramsey<br />
That Was the Year That Was, Sat 17th, White Hart,<br />
8pm £16.50/£14.50. See treasonshow.co.uk<br />
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