What happens to comedy when British politics becomes a joke?
The satire bust
The satire boom began on August 22nd 1960, when the cast of “Beyond The Fringe” took the stage in a half-empty Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. It took 90 minutes for Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller to demolish “all that is sacred in the British way of life with glorious and expert precision”, wrote one critic. Almost every subsequent British satire from the 1980s’ “Yes, Minister”, which portrayed cynical civil servants, to 2005’s “The Thick Of It”, which portrayed cynical New Labour advisers, owes a debt to four young men fresh out of Oxford and Cambridge over 60 years ago.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “The satire bust”
Britain August 19th 2023
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- What happens to comedy when British politics becomes a joke?
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