That Rory Bremner, he's a card. Imagine ringing up Margaret Beckett pretending to be Gordon Brown. The incident reminded me of Bart Simpson phoning up Mo's Tavern in a grown-up voice and asking for "Homer Sexual". The difference being I laughed when Bart did it. Snickering schoolboy humour works so much better when delivered by a schoolboy.
In fact, the whole incident demonstrates the increasing desperation of political satire. Any shock-jock prank-call big impact tactic will do. Like his fellow satirists Mark Thomas and Mark Steel, Bremner persistently makes the mistake of thinking that if you make a politically valid point then it is inherently funny. Unfortunately, satire does not work like that. If it did, then Evelyn Waugh's racist, amoral Decline and Fall would not be so laugh out loud funny.
The lack of imagination they show means that the likes of Thomas and Michael Moore stay wedded to the stunt culture of their TV shows - Thomas brilliantly characterised by Chris Morris as somebody who "goes around and bullies receptionists". The more they convince themselves they're on a crusade, the more I hear Bart Simpson on the phone to Mo.
Satirists are complex people who need to feel that they matter. The truth is that they don't - at least not how they want to. Bremner desperately wanted to find out some dark Watergate truth about the Cabinet and ended up looking like a chump. Insufferably smug as ever, Bremner declared of the phone call "The safe door swung open". "Really?" BBC political editor Nick Robinson responded "I couldn't spot a single newsworthy story in his conversation."
It is telling that Chris Morris, the big critic of the overt politicisation of satire, has made many of the most powerful political points. An MP agreeing to table a question in the House about fictional killer narcotics as part of a manufactured drugs scare? Now that, unlike the Beckett stunt, is funny.
In fact, the whole incident demonstrates the increasing desperation of political satire. Any shock-jock prank-call big impact tactic will do. Like his fellow satirists Mark Thomas and Mark Steel, Bremner persistently makes the mistake of thinking that if you make a politically valid point then it is inherently funny. Unfortunately, satire does not work like that. If it did, then Evelyn Waugh's racist, amoral Decline and Fall would not be so laugh out loud funny.
The lack of imagination they show means that the likes of Thomas and Michael Moore stay wedded to the stunt culture of their TV shows - Thomas brilliantly characterised by Chris Morris as somebody who "goes around and bullies receptionists". The more they convince themselves they're on a crusade, the more I hear Bart Simpson on the phone to Mo.
Satirists are complex people who need to feel that they matter. The truth is that they don't - at least not how they want to. Bremner desperately wanted to find out some dark Watergate truth about the Cabinet and ended up looking like a chump. Insufferably smug as ever, Bremner declared of the phone call "The safe door swung open". "Really?" BBC political editor Nick Robinson responded "I couldn't spot a single newsworthy story in his conversation."
It is telling that Chris Morris, the big critic of the overt politicisation of satire, has made many of the most powerful political points. An MP agreeing to table a question in the House about fictional killer narcotics as part of a manufactured drugs scare? Now that, unlike the Beckett stunt, is funny.
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