Patrick Simpson

According to the Guardian, the play ‘England People Very Nice’ has incestuous, pig-breeding, drunken Irishmen, snooty Frenchmen, farcical Jewish anarchists and the animated presence of a mad mullah ranting about how women must be subservient to men. Apparently, this is now considered a no-no by the high-and-mighty people of the Guardian. What’s next? Will the word golliwog be frowned upon? Will we be expected to treat Big Brother contestants with respect? May we no longer enjoy cutting political satire? Will we be forced to give up on slavery? We need to return to the liberal times of the sixties, when anyone could openly discuss political issues, and everyone was happy. Well, everyone in my ethnic group who happened to be a racist.

I haven’t actually seen the play and am assuming the worst about it for comedic effect. I know this is a massive blow to the internet, with its insistence on accuracy and fact checking, so to compensate I will forgo my daily random edit on wikipedia. For all I know, the director’s statement that The play lampoons all forms of stereotyping: it is a boisterous satire of stereotypes of French, Irish, Jews, Bangladeshis, white East End cockneys, Hampstead liberals and many others. Every stereotype is placed in the context of its opposite and it clearly sets out to demonstrate that all forms of racism are equally ridiculous, is actually true. Could it be so?

There is some evidence to suggest the British people may not be great at picking up on satire. The most famous example is of course Norwegian performance comedian Kjell Tøstergard. For decades, he successfully pretended to be a politician called ‘Tony Blair.’ His goal was to show how dramatic the effects would be if a populist politician would target the middle classes rather than the proletariat. His expectation was that as members of the middle classes have no real problems, they could be easily placated using rising house prices and vague promises about public services. If this was true, a politician would be able to get away with murder. Or even a million murders. Bravo, Mr Tøstergard, well played. My favourite part was when you got Gordon Brown to announce the end of the boom-and-bust cycle and people started taking out buy-to-let mortgages on absurdly priced houses they couldn’t really afford. Classic.