[Jayne Osborn]

Well, many Brits are adamant that he should be GOING.
Watch the entertaining Jonathan Pie expressing the views of most of us, over this fiasco... https://youtu.be/tDnGQemzf2s

“Boris”, “Cummings”, “integrity”… They can’t go into the same sentence without a negative in between.

It’s all “Specious sophistry” as someone put it, which is a great phrase under the circumstances, I think!

A friend sent me this poem today (I don’t know who wrote it; I wish I could say it was me, but then I wouldn’t be able to post it here on General Talk).

There was an old Tory called Dom
His wife called, she needed to vom.
"We're likely contagious,
But lockdown won't cage us!
Let's drive north and visit your mom".

So into the car they all piled;
The Tory, the wife and the child.
To mom's residential,
A journey 'essential'
And symptoms apparently mild.

Then after Dom's fever and plight,
His vision just wasn't quite right.
"Opticians? Such hassle
Let's drive to a castle.
It's crucial for testing my sight".

So into the car they all piled;
The Tory, the wife and the child.
A nice birthday outing for lockdown-rule-flouting,
And Covid The Killer just smiled.

(After driving 260 miles-plus, could anyone actually believe he drove a further 30 miles to Barnard Castle to check if his eyesight was OK? Does he take us all for idiots?)

Jayne

[Max Goodman]

I watched the clip, Jayne, and Jonathan Pie struck me as brilliant: funny and eloquent, he helped me understand the Cummings situation and share his outrage. He made me envy you Brits for living in a place where you feel you can expect your leaders to behave decently and to abide by the rules they impose on the rest of you.

I was so impressed that I wanted to learn more about Pie. What I learned confused me.

He's fictional. What I saw of his Brexit reporting seemed to satirize the British press. (I didn't watch the whole thing, since I'm not familiar enough with the British press to get much out of the ridicule.)

So is Pie actually making fun of the outrage at Cummings? Or is Walker speaking in his own voice and using the Pie name because it's more well known than his own (which would seem to dilute the character and confuse the audience)?

Clearly, I don't understand British humor as well as I thought I did.

[Jayne Osborn]

Hi Max,

I'm glad you enjoyed the clip. I've watched it several times because he's saying exactly what needs to be said, ...but it's dead funny at the same time!

Yes, it's satire, but it works SO well; Jonathan Pie is just like a real reporter, but on this occasion I do believe his impassioned rant is actually genuine - as most of the nation is totally outraged at Cummings' behaviour.

I've just heard on Radio 4 that the police are not taking any action... Boris won't do anything either, so it looks like he'll get away with it. (No ordinary member of the public would have done, of course, and thousands of people have already been fined for far more minor instances.)

The people defending Cummings keep coming out with the phrase "We must move on..." in other words, "never mind about the pathetic excuses for breaking lockdown rules, let's just whitewash the whole thing."

I was a Tory all my life until the last election, but this is one more nail in the Conservative coffin. Johnson and Cummings are lying bastards, as Pie so vehemently puts it.

Jayne

[Mark McDonnell]

So is Pie actually making fun of the outrage at Cummings? Or is Walker speaking in his own voice and using the Pie name

The latter. Yes, Jonathan Pie is a fictional news reporter played by the actor /comedian Tom Walker. The sketches always involve him just before or at the tail-end of an outside broadcast news report, and Pie's angry rant when the cameras are off. The implication is that Pie's opinions are basically a heightened version of Walker's own, so we laugh with rather than at him. Before he became more well known the character went viral on YouTube so a lot of people thought he was a real reporter losing his shit.
I think he's brilliant.