Enough! When will BBC comedy leave the apologetic self-deprecation alone?

In the new series of Radio 4’s Dead Ringers, the US Election and Reeve’s Budget are no match for tired jokes about the Beeb itself

Regime change is manna from heaven for satirists and impressionists. Fresh faces, fresh headlines and, most importantly, fresh voices inject some air into the nation’s whoopie cushion, whetting our comedians’ topical material in an instance. Dead Ringers (Radio 4) returned for a 25th series to an already listing Labour government, a sensationally divisive Budget and five days out from a seismic US election.
How would Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens et al set about lampooning all that? Predictably, in the main, but that is the way with up-to-the-minute topical comedy. Reeves is dour, Starmer is out of touch, Trump is a blowhard, etc. What was less predictable – although perhaps we should have seen it coming – was that Dead Ringers spent most of this opening episode taking the mick out of the BBC, as if under orders from the bigwigs who fear any kind of satirical comedy on the Corporation makes them look “smug”.
It began with a tongue-in-cheek edition of the Today programme, before moving on to The World at One, Newsnight, podcast Young Again and The Repair Shop. I tried to scribble down all the other in-house targets of Dead Ringer’s teasing: Nick Robinson, Emma Barnett, BBC balance, Zoe Ball, Radio 2, Sarah Montague, Victoria Derbyshire, Strictly Come Dancing, Kirsty Young, Jay Blades… It’s as if the show has been appointed the BBC’s court jester and must roam up and down the corridors of Broadcasting House with a pig’s bladder on a stick, shouting “Prithee, that Laura Kuenssberg is a bit biased, eh?”
There were satirical targets outside of the goldfish bowl, too, but I would beg Radio 4 to give the writers 24 more hours to polish the scripts. Within seconds of the first Rachel Reeves impression there was a gag about Taylor Swift tickets; almost the first words out of Liz Truss’s mouth were “pork markets”. The latter of these got a knowing ironic cheer from the studio audience, who, bless ’em, don’t make it easy to love the show at times.
There was some gold there. The impressions are usually enormously enjoyable – a good Trump impersonation is always a delight, Starmer’s adenoidal drone is a gift to the mimics, great fun can be mined from the doddery Joe Biden. Some jokes landed beautifully – Reeves quoting Pulp’s Common People to describe “working people”, Tim Walz as Ned Flanders, the King addressing Commonwealth reparation demands with a discount code for BetterHelp (podcast devourers will have enjoyed that one), and there was even something approaching bared teeth when it came to recent allegations involving Blades.
This led to the one truly excellent in-joke: “Don’t worry, whatever Jay has or hasn’t done, he’ll still get paid – this is the BBC after all.” Perhaps it’s self-defence, with the BBC taking the approach that the best policy is to be its own biggest critic. But – enough! There’s plenty going on in the world that is venal, cruel, absurd and risible that needs taking down a peg or two. Leave the apologetic self-deprecation aside for a while.
If ranting about a Radio 4 comedy makes me a miserable old fart, then I found good company in podcast The Old Fools (Giddy Goat Productions), which turned out its third episode this week. The premise is the same is almost all podcasts – people chatting, loosely, comedically, on anything and everything – but this one has added spite and spice by being presented by the comedy writers Ian Martin and David Quantick, 71 and 63 respectively, who have little time for niceties and nothing to flog.
The first episode began with Martin – who came up with The Thick of It’s most ingenious, expletive-heavy insults – stating “Swimming’s s–t” to their guest, author Jenny Landreth, and it only got more curmudgeonly from there, as they laid into everything from “luxury protesting” to pensioners’ cinema tickets and Bonfire Night.
The only thing that has got a positive review so far is Disney+’s adaptation of Rivals. “One of the many things I liked about it,” said Quantick, “was its really clear depiction of how the ITV franchises worked in the 1980s regarding the [regulatory body] IBA. That’s not really been covered in a sexy way before.”
There’s a pleasing edge of Derek and Clive to proceedings – not least when they collapse wheezing in laughter – which is all the better for not being overplayed. The wordplay is wonderful – Tony Blair is described as a “haunted Pilates instructor” – and the tone is anarchic and playful. “You don’t get this on the f—ing News Agents, do you?” said Martin at one point. You don’t. Nor Radio 4. Dead Ringers might consider bringing Martin and Quantick in as writers. Then the BBC really would have something to apologise for.