 Welcome to an evening of satire at the British Library Britain obviously has a very long and distinguished history of satire and holding the powerful to account no wonder our politics is in such great shape. You're in the right place to explore this, we also have an amazing exhibition called Breaking the News, one of our curators is here tonight. But above all I want to thank Shazia Mirza who stepped in at the last minute because our host Andy Saltsman has very unfortunately got Covid. So we wish Andy a speedy recovery and Shazia we love you very very much. Shazia is on tour now with her show Coconut and next week she's going to be on Would I Lie to You. So don't miss that, absolutely. For those of you who are joining us online you can buy the book, 60 Years of Private Eye, it's also available outside. That's compulsory. It's actually compulsory, he's watching you. And you can add questions at any time. We will be coming to our in-person audience and our online audience can pop your questions in any time and we'll be coming to those later. I'd also like to welcome our friends with the Living Knowledge Network which has libraries all over the UK who are joining this event too. Particularly our friends in Jersey library so hello to you. Without further ado a huge round of applause please for our guests tonight. Thank you very much. Hello everybody, my name is Shazia Mercer. I hope I said that correctly. No no please don't be offended if I've got that wrong. I'm not used to pronouncing foreign names since Brexit. I once did a gig in Northern Ireland actually where they thought that some of the letters in my name were silent. I was introduced to Shaver Minzad. Shaver Minzad sounds like a Pakistani hair removal product. I wasn't offended and didn't kill anybody, nobody got murdered. A few days later I was walking down the street and this man came up to me and said I love your work Malala. Now tonight we don't want anyone to be offended because it is fashionable to be offended now everybody's offended you know. Some people are offended and they don't know why. Some people are offended on other people's behalf. Some people are offended because other people are not offended enough. And some people are offended because they just want someone to write to. Everybody's offended nobody knows why. Everybody's offended on someone else's behalf. That's like going to A&E because your neighbour fell off a ladder. So I'm going to introduce the guests one by one and I'm going to say a bit about each guest. We're going to ask them some questions on satire and then there's going to be 30 minutes of Q&A at the end where if you want to ask any specific questions then B is going to come round and take your questions. Also at home there's loads of people online. If you want to ask questions then you can email them in. So our first guest is Henni Beaumont. Here you are. And she is an award winning graphic novelist illustrator and political cartoonist. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, the BBC and many many more. She illustrated Equal to Everything, the children's book about Lady Brenda Hale written by Alfusa Hirsh. She has been an artist in residence for the Hay Festival and founded the Hackney Shorts Film Festival. Welcome. First of all, can you show us a bit of your work? Yes, so I'm actually an award winning cartoonist, not graphic novelist. I'll make sure that woman gets cancelled. Thank you. So I'm going to do some live drawing. I'm going to draw the other panellists and I'm going to also try and do some cartoons on the hoof as well. But I'm going to start off by showing you something I've prepared earlier. So this is, be warned, x-rated. It's basic instinct but with clothes on. This is like an old fashioned... Wait, wait, it gets better. It's like an old fashioned flip book. It's quite strong if I bust it. I'm afraid it gets worse. The next is really rude. You've got those funny dry cracked lips very well. And then really you might need to shut your eyes for this one. Wait for it. I know sorry that hand went a bit wrong. I did it very quickly this afternoon. Not intentional. This is what poor Angela Rayner has had to put up with. So there we go. We'll come back to you later and ask you some questions about Satire and how you've drawn those. What are the limits to Satire and things like that? Jan Ravens is one of the UK's most prominent impressionists. She's a long running star of BBC Radio 4's Dead Ringers. Her Theresa May impression has had over a million views on YouTube. She's also a regular contributor across BBC Radio 4 on programmes such as Just a Minute. I'm sorry I haven't got a clue. Jan broke box office records with her solo show Difficult Woman. Followed by a sell out one hour with Rory Bremner. Please welcome Jan Ravens. It's very fashionable to be a woman now. They're everywhere. They're doing everything. They're taking over. They're doing things they shouldn't be doing. Back when I started doing impressions, when I started doing Dead Ringers, I remember the first episode of Dead Ringers that I did. I played posh spice in a secretary. So I had to kind of work quite hard to get the female characters in at that point. But now of course there are so many female politicians. But some people say, at one point people were saying to me, why are you taking the piss out of all these women? That's not very sisterly. And I was thinking, women have to have the confidence to have the piss taken out of them. And of course, as Shazia mentioned, I did have quite a good go at Theresa May. Because poor Theresa had that extreme tension. It was like she wanted to smile but the rest of her face wouldn't let her. She had that funny walk. She was carrying a drip trolley. All very satirical, as you can tell. I actually can't remember any of the satirical jokes now. But yes, I had a bit of a feel day with Theresa May. And now of course most recently I've been trying to get Liz Truss. Because Liz Truss is like one of those women whose daddy always told her she was funny. And she just is so grateful to be there. The Truster and she's banging. It's just so great going on the PJ and being really centre stage. And then alongside her, alongside her of course we've got Nadine Dorries. Now I am the Minister for Culture, Sport, Media and Digital. I can't be doing all these details, not when there's a war on. And my name, of course, the war on woke. The woke Arati are threatening us at every turn and I for one am not going to stand for it. John Rowman! Brilliant, brilliant. Thank you, thank you for that, John. We'll come back to you. It's been insightful questions. Next we have Tamara Tubb there. She is the British Library's resident Hogarth Maniac. And is one of the curators for the Breaking the News exhibition. Her research interests include celebrity throughout the ages, early modern textual cultures and the 21st century news environment. Prior to joining the library in 2016, Tamara worked variously as a teacher, researcher and digital media executive. Please welcome Tamara everyone. Now you've dealt with satire through the ages and more recently Trump during Covid. Do you think that Trump gave people a lot of laughs during Covid? Did that uplift people? I think he was certainly a distraction, wasn't he? One nightmare going on over here, another over there, something to follow. But no, he does feature in the exhibition. We were looking at building the exhibition pre-Covid. So while everything was going on with Trump in 2017, 2018, and at one point it seemed like the whole exhibition would just be around Trump. There was something new every single day. Glad to say we didn't focus on Trump. He is there. We've managed to feature him in such a way that harks back to Gilray into the 18th century and to Hogarth as well. There is such a grand tradition of satirical cartoonists and sending up these mad, bad political figures. So yes, he is there in context. What's been the most popular part of your exhibition, do you think, with the public? Oh, I'm not sure. I've not done an audience survey as yet. But something I do love to see whenever I take people around. We've got a kind of shed of chaos within the freedom of the press section, which is where satire sits as well. And that puts the civil war in the 17th century and the pamphlet boom and all the crazy things that people could say and do when there was no regulation up against Brexit and grassroots movements on Facebook and social media. So it's all these means in the public getting satirical and having their say about current events. And it's, as I say, the parallels through history. So Brexit versus civil war or Gilray and Steve Bell on Trump, Theresa May or George III. Interesting. Round of applause for Tamara. And finally, we have Ian Hislop here, who is a white man. And as we all know, white men are fucked. No one gives a shit what they have to say. No one cares about their opinion. They can't get on the BBC. I mean, when was the last time you saw a white man on the BBC? I mean, 1954, I mean, where are they? I miss them. I miss that diversity. But it has to be that way. Because, you know, when I was growing up, nobody on TV ever looked like me. My doubt always used to say to me, hurry up, hurry up, get downstairs. Trevor is on the TV. Because Trevor MacDonald was the closest thing to an Asian woman at the time. But anyway, Ian's going to speak tonight for a few minutes. Now, the thing is, Ian Hislop is a... You know all this, but I'm going to say it anyway. He's a writer, a journalist, a broadcaster. He has been the editor of the satirical magazine, Private Eye, since 1986. 1886. And, well, we know him. He's well known in the BBC for the show. Have I got news for you? Where he has been captaining since 1990. And in January, he presented evidence on MPs' conduct to the House of Commons Standards Committee. Ian allegedly went to school with Osama bin Laden. Yes, I've got a lot of achievements. That's the top one. Well, I'm related to him, so I trumped out. Okay, fine. He's the most fair time. He is the most sued man in English legal history. Only for a white man is that an achievement. Please welcome Ian Hislop. Now, Ian, you know, you are the king of satire. You've been doing it a long time. And, you know, what is satire? What is satire? It's the ridicule and holding up to humour of folly, contempt and vice. And it's got a long tradition. I'm a contemporary of Hogarth's. Someone else I was at school with. And, no, I mean, essentially, I mean, we're just coming up to a bilex and council elections and I was looking again at Hogarth's series of paintings. There's an election series, 1754. And I thought there are four brilliant pictures about the run-up to the vote. And I thought, I've done all these jokes. And then I remembered, no, he's done all these jokes and we've nicked them ever since. English satire has a long and I think rather rich and glorious tradition of holding power to account. And it is something that I think the exhibition and certainly a lot of the printed satire that you see and privatise just the latest incarnation of it in Britain is essentially about doing the same thing. It's part of the democratic process. I genuinely believe that. People say to you, what satire ever achieved? I always think, well, again, minute by minute, not a great deal. But if you take it in the long run, I always think, well, how much worse would it have been if there hadn't been any? And that seems to me the point of doing it. Partly for the audience to feel somebody cares. Someone feels the same as we do. Partly for the person who's doing it just to feel better about it. The pleasure of doing the joke when you're feeling impotent and then the release of the joke makes you feel less so. So we continue to do that. And sometimes it changes things. It crystallises an opinion. It changes a view. It adds to the debate. And it does it in a comic way. And I think that is still a worthwhile occupation. I mean, the fact that I can't do anything else may well prejudice that. But no, I still believe it is worth doing. And how has it changed since you started Have I Got News For You to now? Have you watched the show? I mean, are there things that you have difficulty saying or satirising now as compared to when you first started Have I Got News For You? No. I don't believe that. Most people who say you can't say anything anymore then go on to say it. It just seems to me untrue. And I don't think there is anything that we would be constrained to say on Have I Got News For You. This series we had a new culture minister, Nadine Doris, who said she was very fed up with the criticism of government on panel shows. So on the first panel show we devoted 20 minutes to her. I don't feel constrained. If we get sacked then that'll be evidence. But no, I genuinely feel people are still entitled to put forward their views. And that's part of what's meant to be, even for them, a conservative tradition, is freedom of speech and an ability to, if someone takes the piss, you suck it up. There's 300 years of that. And it's time to remember. And do you think it's typically British things, satire? British satire has been very rich. There's a very rich French tradition, which I know about. I mean the first really great satirist and people said to him, why did you do satire? It's a real waste of time. He was a juvenile. He was a Roman satirist in 100 AD. And they said, oh, he never achieved anything. Why don't you pack it in? And juvenile's big rant, he used to say things like, do you know how much teachers get paid compared to actors? This is the first century AD. And you think, no, nothing changes that much. So no, I mean it's not specifically British, but in the way Britain has evolved, it's become part of our method of democracy. And it's been a very useful one. So I'm keen on that. I'm sure there are lots of places where satire is essentially thriving and then removed. I mean in Turkey's Erdogan, the first person who got sacked was the stand-up comic on the telly who took the piss out of Erdogan. In Russia, all the hysterical organs have been closed down. It's the first thing they go for. And I mean, a very small story. I mean, in the Balkan War, there was an absolutely brilliant magazine in Croatia, a satirical magazine called the Feral Tribune. It was like the Herald Tribune. And the two authors came to see me in the middle of the war and they said, we've got this satirical magazine and they showed me this stuff. And I said, God, you guys are so brave. And they looked at me and they said, we don't care if you think we're brave. Are we funny? And I thought, yep, that's it. That's the point. And they were wonderful. Incredibly funny magazine. So I mean, lots of people do it, but we're very lucky here that we've been allowed to do it for a long time and worked out ways to make sure that it's allowed. And Private Eye has been running for 60 years. Yeah, I mean, incredibly. And there have been lots of times when it looked as though it wouldn't make it. But that's mostly libel actions. And they're not my fault. Ian Hyslop, everybody. So Heni. The thing about Hogarth is he was short, bald, bad tempered, and had a dog. Whereas I've got a cat. So Heni, we're going to talk a bit about the limits of satire. One of the limits. Do you think there are limits? Do you just do what you want? I've got something. Well, I mean, do you just do what you want? It feels like there are a lot of people in our government doing what they want. So in response, I'm going to try and do something for you all. Okay, bear with me. This is again, I'm afraid, rude. I haven't tried this before, but I'm sure it's going to work. Can you tell what it is yet? I'm going to help you. Sorry, that's a Rolf Harris reference. That's all. That really is way beyond the limit. Yeah. Sorry, guys. Is this going to get better? Yeah. I hope you can read this. Oh, no, hang on. Oh, no. Okay. This is not a topless model, but there are some available. Sorry. I'm going to try it. You might not recognise him. I might have to show you a picture, but I will try and draw him. It's attractive. Thank you, Hen. I don't know, I've just had a commentary. Those are tears. He was very upset, poor fellow. There we go. And this is that well-known sight. Also, I looked up farm machinery. Apparently you can get these. Stripper. And, so I've just got to finish my tractor off. The other thing. Slow stripper. So it clearly was a really easy mistake to make. And we should all have a lot of sympathy for this guy. Sorry. You don't need to watch me finish off the tea time. So what would you name this work? This work. Tractor hub. Tractor pawn, is it? What did he call it? And where can people go to find this? I think it's the dominator tractor is what his mate said he was looking up. But you know. But it turns out that that isn't actually a tractor. I think it's a combine harvest. As ever with the Tories, absolutely everything is wrong. Even the detail of the tractors which you're interested in. I couldn't believe this story because it said he was accessing pawns twice. Once in the House of Commons before a vote and once in a select committee. And I've sat in a select committee. It's a really small room. And there cameras here and here. And you're on benches that close to each other. I mean what did he think was going to happen next? Yeah. Well thanks for that Heni. Round of applause for Heni. Now Jan, you worked on spitting image. I did back in the day. Some people would say that was like the golden era of 80s satire. Yeah. I think it was and Ian of course wrote lots of the sketches. But I think it was great at the time because it was a combination of the brilliance of the caricatures and the puppets. And the script editing of John Lloyd who produced it. It was like a sort of perfect storm because it did become that sort of watercolour moment. It was a water cooler moment where it just became that thing you talked about. And because they were puppets you could do so much more. You could be so much, you could pretend people were... Kenneth Baker was a slug or Norman Tebbitt was a biker. I mean the funny thing is of course that a lot of these politicians loved there. And wanted to buy their puppets because it was kind of like a badge of honour. And even portraying Thatcher as a man. It was a sign of strength really that she was portrayed as a man. The only person that wasn't so keen on it was David Steele who appeared in the pocket of David Owen. Which apparently was a complete accident. You must know this story Ian as well. They had a sketch with David Owen and David Steele. And they'd only made the prototype of the David Owen puppet. And you know the sort of model for the real puppet. And they said oh sod it we'll just put that in David Owen's pocket. And you know we'll do the sketch like that. And everyone was like you know well this is brilliant. And David Steele was like you know fuck that I'm actually quite tall. But he felt it kind of like really kind of affected people's perception of him. And I think that's what you know you're talking about when you say you know satire might not sort of bring down the government. But it can change people's perceptions. And I think also if you make people laugh at something or see things in a slightly different way. You can change perceptions. You know you can alter perceptions even if you don't bring down the government which is unlikely. And in that sketch I mean the SDP and the Lib Dems if you remember at the time had gone into a coalition. Which was supposed to be an equal coalition. And David Owen blatantly having been you know foreign secretary was running the show. And David Steele actually said oh I'm sick of us being seen as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. Which I thought suggested a sort of parody. And the sketch we finally produced was David Steele as a tiny little boy. I was going oh David. And in a sense I think that reflected the political reality. So it was an accident. And like many things on splitting images about money. You know they got a big David Owen puppet. We're not going to spend any money we'll have a tiny little one. Put it in his pocket. That's effective in terms of altering perceptions. And that's what you can do in such a time. But do you think the same levels of cruelty you could get away with that today? You know the whole sort of issue of cruelty is always like there are a sort of number of rules where you say you know you shouldn't punch down. You should make sure that you're always punching up and that you're not ridiculing people who are vulnerable or you know who can't take it for some reason. And I used to you know I always said I don't want to take the piss out of people because of the way they look. You know as an impressionist sort of on the telly when we were doing Dead Rings on the Telly. I didn't want to take the piss out of the way people looked. I wanted to take the piss out of what they said or the way they said it. Because that's what I wanted to satirise. And I remember the person that I did feel quite sort of ambivalent about doing with Cherie Blair. Because number one she wasn't a politician. And number two you know I had to sort of do you know that sort of mouth like that. You know the sort of scouser who was doing like that and had this sort of oblong mouth. And it was sort of like I sort of thought oh dear am I taking the piss out of the way that this woman looks. And I thought oh she's a mercenary you know. She's selling off the family silver she can take it. But if you think sorry if you think about cruelty I mean the sketch I'm most proud of writing on Splitting Image was a King Mider story in reverse and it was Robert Maxwell you'll be amazed to hear. We had a puppet of him and he wandered round and anything he touched turned to shit. And it was a fabulous sketch and it had Nick Park who did a lot of the animation for rather sweeter ventures later in his life. But at the time he did this marvellous thing of Maxwell turning to a business shit person shit newspaper. And this was made better by the fact that Robert Maxwell was on the board of ITV. And people will say oh well you don't know what you can get away with. And John Lloyd who was the producer had to argue the case for saying it's not really rude. And it went out. I mean Maxwell said you know you can't put this out and they put it out anyway. Which was sort of incredibly robust and I do remember that at the time and trying to hold on to that. That ability to be able to say no we can do this. I think the current series of spitting image has had much more restrictions on it in terms of what it can and can't say. And actually this is something you might like to make a comment on Shazer. It's like apparently you know how pretty Patel is always saying all the words that are ending in ING. Just like they are like that. And famously Ian gave her a mouth for when she was talking about bringing back hang in on question time. But apparently they weren't allowed to portray that speech idiosyncrasy because they said it was racist. Which it isn't even. Relating to what? Relating to the fact that you know she is a woman of colour. If you're saying that that is not about her race. I know it's because you're a white person saying that. My new show is called Coconut. Which is the term we use for Pretty Patel and Sajid Javid. We call them coconuts. They're brown on the outside and white on the inside. And it is a term used by brown people about other brown people who are not seen to be helping the cause of brown people. Which is Pretty Patel. For definite? Yes. You know deporting her own people. Soon she'll have to deport herself. She'll have her mum and dad out. Mum and dad on. And that is a racist term that only I can use. But it's a way of describing my own people. And I think it's a bit of a problem when say a white person says those same things is that race comes into it as an issue. But actually that's got nothing to do with her race. No. She's just a bitch. Regardless of the thing. It's just unfortunate for us because we have so few female Asian role models and then we get one and she's awful. So that's not good for us because I mean especially Muslim women there's only two portrayals of us. We either bake cakes in a burger or blow things up. There's nothing in between. And she really let us down. See the Guardian Readers are scared to laugh. And we know with the Guardian Readers that they never really come to laugh anyway. They come to learn. They come to think oh that's very clever. I'll laugh about that later. The same people will go to the pub tomorrow and go do you know what I saw Omed Jalili last night. She was absolutely fantastic. Anyway so tomorrow I mean how is Satire framed in the exhibition? I mean how do you choose the selections that you choose? Yes so the exhibition covers 500 years of the news. So it's a kind of long telescope look at things. And the idea is to put the modern with the historical and while doing that to answer big questions around the news. So one of the sections looks at what it actually means to have a free press. And that's where Satire sits. It's the freedom to be able to speak truth to power or to ridicule or to have that kind of different voice and different take on things. Whether it be you know Gilrae in the 18th century or you know you aren't on Facebook talking about Brexit in whatever way that chooses to be. So it's there you know it's a kind of bastion of freedom and the way that we understand our free press in this country is how it's framed in the exhibition. I'm Gilrae's problematic isn't he because he took a state pension in private in order not to satirise the government. Oh really? Not a good end. I mean he's a fantastic artist and I mean his early career is extraordinary. But in those days I mean the powers that be intervened very very directly with a large amount of money. And they literally came around and said leave me out of the picture. Here's 500 quid. And people did. The really clever ones. A wonderful man called Crookshank who is my hero. The royal family not being hugely bright then or indeed later. They decided I know what we'll do. If he draws me I'll just buy up every picture there is. Crookshank then marvellous printed another 500. A lot of restrictions actually weren't there because I mean it was in terms of portraying public figures. Again in the 18th century Robert Walpole brought in the Lord Chamberlain's Act so that people couldn't portray. Because he got so fed up with himself being ridiculed in plays by Fielding and Congregans. So he said right no more of it I'll bring in an act. So they brought in the Lord Chamberlain's Act in 1737 or something. You're not allowed to portray a member of the royal family or a political figure on stage. That's that. And that act stayed in force until 1968. And apparently there was no portrayals of the Queen on stage until then. There was one apparently. Somebody did the coronation on ice in 1953 in Blackpool or something. The Goons used to do a sketch where Spike Milligan interviewed a woman called the Duchess of Boyle de Spudswell. And that was Peter Sellers who came on and did a Queen impersonation. She was quite obviously a Queen. The first person that did the Queen on Telly was Stanley Baxter. The first person to do an impression of the Queen on Telly was Stanley Baxter and that was not until 1972 or something like that. I got that from the Encyclopedia of Comedy. I asked Barry Cryer. And Tamara who do you think are the good satirists around at the moment? I mean there are so many. It's such a rich field isn't it? I mean we have everyone here on this stage. So I have kind of noticed recently, perhaps not necessarily recently, but one of the great Trump pictures again from during the lockdown when he left the office. There's a great image of the chaos and the devastation in the Oval Office. And it's harking back to Hogarth and those prints about the election. I mean detail. I think detail is becoming so much more important and it's so vivid. And that's what kind of captures my imagination with satirical prints and things like that at the moment. Ian there has been an unchanging appetite for how I've got news for you for 60 years. For years at this. It's 30 of them. This woman needs to be sacked. But its structure has remained the same. But how has the tone and the content changed? And has it become more representative? Well there are more women on, which is good. And there are more people from ethnic minorities on, which is good. There are more working class people on. Paul would say no. I remember him sitting and we had a panel of people. We had two women, an Asian comic himself and myself. And he said, oh this is wonderfully diverse. Everyone from Oxbridge except me. So there are other measures going on. I mean yes, I think the programme has been going for 32 years. And has changed in, I think probably in the context of the personnel more than in the context of the format. Which is just an excuse really. I mean to have a conversation about the news. We play these rounds and it seems to be a quiz which I lose. Last week there was a report saying there aren't enough working class voices in the BBC. And Paul said, well why don't we try and experiment say over 30 years where someone from a working class background is up against some overeducated brat. And see who wins. So we did that. And I lost again. So no, I mean the joy of having got these views has always been. And became more so really about after Angus Deaton left and then we had the revolving thing. It became more of a conversation than less of a quiz. And that is really enjoyable. And there are moments when you can just let rip as it were. And there's no structure to stop you. And that really helps. How does it make it better when you have a diverse panel? Well people say different things. But people could say different things even with a white male panel. Yeah, I mean you could have a huge variation and experience some of us at Oxford, some at Cambridge. Are you saying that someone like me could say jokes that you couldn't say? Yeah, as you just said. I mean I can't call people coconuts. I can't say she's a bitch. I can't do any of that. You could say she's a bitch. No, I wouldn't want to. And what I like is just pointing out that between the beginning and the second half of her sentence she changes her mind. I like saying things like, oh you're deporting people to Rwanda who've just come from a genocide. Oh they'll feel at home. Those are the sort of things I think are worth saying about her, which I can say. But people say different things. I mean when we had Baroness Varsion and we were talking about the Chancellor and she said, you think, because there was someone made a comment saying, look at him, he's unbelievably rich and he's married an incredibly rich woman. And she said, that's what our community thinks is fantastic. He's a model boy for every grandmother. I can't say that, eggs I don't know that because it would sound wrong. But it's really interesting. And then she says, what's your attitude to outsiders? And she says, oh we come from Yorkshire, we hate everybody. That's a comment about being from Yorkshire and yet also being from anathema. Obviously it's really interesting and that's different. But I think I still come from a reasonable minority of people in the country who might have a viewpoint and have something to say. So I think I can still do that bit, when I can't I'll get sang. It's quite interesting that satire has for so long and to some degree still is. I'm in a way part of this. It's been the territory of public school boys and they've been, historically, since the satire boom started at the beginning of the 60s. And it's only now really, like on dead ringers for example, we've now got quite a few women. We've got women of colour. There is a more diverse, which does give you a more diverse perspective I think. I think Alan Bennett would probably disagree with you. I mean the original Beyond the Fringe line up in the 60s, they used to come on stage. And Peter Cook would say, well obviously Jonathan Miller and I both went to good public schools. And it's marvellous working with Alan and Dudley who are working class. And then Dudley would stop and say, but Jonathan Miller is Jewish. And he would say only ish. This is 60, 61, they were aware. And someone like Alan Bennett would claim that his experience was completely different from what he brought. I suppose it is more kind of Oxbridge rather than public school. It's kind of, you know, as you say, it's kind of Oxbridge, isn't it? And that's, I mean that's, you know, about 1600, 1700. I mean the court wits. Essentially it was young men who turned up, thought they were funny and needed an outlet. What did they do? They took the piss out of the people older than them. And that's sort of the tradition. But you do kind of, I would be sort of interested to see, you know, to, I mean, because television commissioners, you know, they want, you know, they want more diversity. They want kind of, you know, this kind of fresh perspective on things. And yet you still don't see a satirical show. I mean there's the MASH report, you know, with Nish. But that's been sacked. That's because the commissioners are white men. And when they say they want diversity, their version of diversity is different to say my version of diversity, they would say that having one brown man does the job. But there's like four, five Muslim women in hijabs on the circuit who are really good and they would be too scared maybe to put them on. Or, they've got one on the bake-off, that is enough. They can't have them everywhere. No comment. I think the main two controllers are both women, aren't they? On the BBC, both one and just saying. Just saying. No, I just think it would be really interesting to see, as you say, a kind of a satirical show, which is like a largely Muslim woman, black man, whatever. Or Pylon. One of the things I really liked about the MASH report is Nish Qumar. At the end of it, nobody said, isn't he interestingly ethnic? They said, isn't he rude about the government, let's get him off. It seems to be a major achievement. And he had a rant and I thought, I recognise all of that rant. You know, great. Yeah, exactly. I think it would be nice to have a different perspective. It's a nice coloured pen. I was doing a character. So we're going to have some questions from the audience. Look, there's a man lying. Just thought, talking of public school boys. But again, part of the perspective, I think it's worth having people like me around, is just saying, this is not a posh person. This is someone imitating 1900 musical posh person. There was a character called Burlington Bertie, who rose at 1030. This is Victorian musical. His dad was a bookseller. Jacob Rees-Mod is as bad as posh as you are. He is an act. Speaking at the Oxford Union, when he was 19 and there was a twat in a top hat. And it was him. Age 19, I had no idea at the time. I was debating with Frankie Howard, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Which was one of the great debates ever. But it's just, again, and Boris, we know he's second generation immigrant. Everything about him is posed. And it is this idea that people are going, we love these posh boys. A, they're not posh. And B, why do you like an elderly caricature which your Victorian grandparents paid sixpence for in a pub? It just seems to me ridiculous. That, I feel, we don't get that. We don't get that bit of commentary on this particular group. It's quite difficult that Trump as well, the satirising of Boris, because people bought into the fact that he was kind of a bit of a buffoon, a bit incompetent, and he made them laugh. Boris, there he goes again. So satirising him, unless you really kind of make those points really strongly, it just becomes another layer of this buffoonery that people kind of buy into. Or they price in, the Tory party price in his buffoonery. You've got to remember Mussolini was known as Il Buffo. He was the clown. And sophisticated Italian people said, oh, Mussolini, very amusing. Journalist, journalist, he'll never get anywhere. Fuck me, he's dictator. And then he's not funny anymore. And there is a similar ability. And he was the same slight after dinner charmer with a patina of education. I've said this since we were both on a show where Boris appeared. And people always said to me, is Boris Johnson a really, really clever man pretending to be stupid? People said no. No. Which is a position I still hold. He literally, after that recording, the first recording, he came up to the end and he said he was cross furious because he'd looked to Pram, which he was. And he said, do you know the Conservative party position on immigration? And I said, no. And he said, dam, cos I've got to address a meeting. He never asked me. It would have been better. It would have been better. So we're going to have some questions from the audience. And B's going to come round or someone's going to come round with a mic. And we've got half an hour of questions. Or at home, if people have emailed their questions in. That's a great drawing. It's got a punch down. So why work from home when you can relax, sleep, watch porn? In the comfort of your own house. Of Commons. You have a question? There's a certain bowl of that, Trump, which I wouldn't say that with that many people. And sometimes it doesn't come across in some of the, you know, some of the set-up I've seen. Why do you actually deal with the level, I was going to say, as a lot of people are calling pure evil? That's what strikes me. How do you actually deal with someone like that? It's almost beyond set-up. Well, I mean, A, don't overrate him. I mean, he's not pure evil. You know, you look at Trump, he's a very, very bad man, a very vain man, a self-satisfied man. But he isn't a mass murderer. And he hasn't personally slaughtered all the members of his family and put them in a basement. So, I mean, again, I think it doesn't help to overdo the picture that you're attempting to caricature. And the problem with Trump was that if you say you're, you know, you're a big fat blonde or ingenious, he goes, yeah, yeah. And, you know, you've got a very bad attitude to women and you're quite cavalier with other people's lives, yeah. If you say you're a terrible businessman, both your business has failed, all the business you inherited from your father you lost, and you haven't paid any taxes, not because you're clever, but because you haven't earned any money, then he goes, apeshit. He starts firing rich at you and tries to have you removed. So, these people have weaknesses, and you have to find where they are. And with Trump, I think it was too easy to go for his bloated caricature. What is the thing for him that hurts? That sounds rather creepy, doesn't it? But I think that is partly what Sasser was trying to do, is looking for weaknesses. And that was it. And I think you're entirely right. You do have to be careful, you don't play into their narrative. And, you know, this is what people say about Peter at the moment. You know, we've had ten years of people saying evil Spengali is the most extraordinary figure in the entire world. He's a performance artist of politics. It may turn out that he's a bit shit and the army doesn't work and they've under-investig and he doesn't know what to do. That really quickly. And that is what hurts, and certainly at home. That's the criticism he won't have. People saying, you know, you're worse than Stalin. Yeah, he's up for that. That's great. People saying you're useless. No. So, I think that's what you have to try and do. We've got some questions coming in from our online audience. Sorry, that was just me wanging on. One of them has come from Tom Brown who asks, do you think satire ever risks making the public not take serious topics seriously? No, I don't think so at all. I think, you know, people aren't stupid. And I think people, you know, the reason satire exists is to sort of point out vice and pomposity and all these different things, but it's to do it and be funny and to provide a release, to have a laugh and to share in that laugh, as Ian was saying, it's like the person sort of creating it is experiencing some kind of release. And so are the people watching. Above all, it's fun. And I think people have got the mouse to know that and to kind of enjoy it for what it is. If you think how cross people are still, I mean, the single thing I enjoy most is politicians saying, well, we've all got over party-cate. No-one's cross anymore. Let's move on. And you think everybody I speak to is cross. You know, personally, I had, you know, relative in a care home we couldn't visit. But so does everybody you meet. Everybody has one of these stories. And the idea that, oh, it's been two weeks now. I've forgotten my relatives. I've forgotten the two years where I couldn't do anything. It's all gone now. We're now going to move on to something serious. Oh, what's that? Oh, Rwanda. Do you know what I mean? That seems to be taking the public for idiots. And if you can make them laugh at that, then you're away and party go out. I mean, I have to say is incredibly funny. The idea of the Prime Minister popping out with a suitcase to fill it up with wine at the co-op and then go back for a work event explains a lot about our public policy if they're all pissed all the time. Oh, there he is. I might just give him a glass of wine now. OK. Any other questions? Getting the microphones around. I'm just going to read another one off from the Living Knowledge Network. Today is World Press Freedom Day. A satirist yourself, have you ever felt threatened by a lack of press freedom? Are you worried about press freedom? Well, my daughter works for an NGO which compiles an annual report on press freedom for Article 19. And it's not good this year. So, yeah, on the whole, democratic rights to a freedom of the press are over the last year in retreat. In this country as well? I mean, this is an international index. And they issued a warning about this country, which you should always issue warnings. But just in terms of arrests, shutdowns, inability to comment at all and people driven out, it's been a very bad year. COVID was a terrific excuse for lots of autocratic regimes to say, you can't mention COVID or us. So that was pretty grim. And then the Russian situation has changed. Absolutely everything. I don't know if you heard any of those incredibly funny and brave Russian journalists who've literally stayed there as long as they could, and then they just went over the border and started broadcasting again. And you just think, oh, that's doing it for real. I mean, they're really impressive. Can I talk a bit about cartoons? I've just got the right thing here. Oh, yeah. And as usual, I was about to say, it's the silent but maybe most effective contributor in the sense that you have... The first cartoon I can ever remember, the first thing I can ever remember is the cartoon I saw when I was about 16. And I still remember them. But I wonder, in the show, which has just been round, actually, there's not much about cartoons. It's all about the battling journalists who got the truth out and changed the nation. But I actually would like to contend that this, which takes the mickey out of everything in sight, as we just got on the screen there, is actually more powerful and has been ever since the 18th century is actually holding people up and taking the mickey out of them of all types and classes and backgrounds is more powerful, actually, than, you know, filleting out some story. Cartoonist probably agrees. Wow. I'd like to think so, yeah. I mean, you get a very strong reaction from cartoons. People have been killed for their cartoons, so it can be very dangerous moment for us. I don't want to make any claim for cartoonists to be more powerful than journalists. But for me, anyway, it's a very powerful medium. And I love doing it. And there are a lot of fantastic cartoonists about whose work I deeply admire, Morton Marland, Peter Brooks, who I just think are kind of geniuses, really. And Steve Bell on a Good Day, as well. Have you ever had any hate mail or death threats for any of your cartoons? Oh, do you know what I was in the Daily Mail, actually, when our Brenda Hale book came out? I did a cartoon of Trump breastfeeding Boris. It was in the Morning Star. The Daily Mail, actually, we were really grateful to them, really, because it was a huge, big piece on our book, because they were very anti-Brenda Hale, and it came out, you know, we'd done this book about this woman who was pretty obscure, and then our book came out as Boris was trying to prorogue Parliament, so she was suddenly this Spider Woman hero, and they did this great big double-piece spread and they called me a communist and revolting, because I'd done this Trump breastfeeding. It was. And we became a bestseller of our book because of it. There's this quite obscure book about Lady Hale for children. It's a lovely book, actually. It's a fantastic book about Lady Hale, but it's a children's book, and to get this huge double-piece spread was pleasing. I do think that cartoons usually appear in magazines and journals, and there is a reason for that. It's not just because no one wants to read the text and they're always flicking to the cartoons, certainly to readers, but it's because the two inform each other. And so cartoon is working on newspapers and magazines, get ideas from journalists. They get a take on a story, or they get the feel of what the story is going to be, and then that comes out in the cartoon, and I think we are sort of independent, really. I mean, originally when the eye was set up, Ingram said, you've got to make jokes about what people know, but you've also got to tell them what they don't know, and that's what the journalists do. So the week after that, you do know. So in you go there. So, you know, on any of those stories that run, there's the initial joke, unbelievable, there's a bloke watching porn. The second joke, someone tells you, he's actually been doing it twice in the chamber and they thought it was two different people because so many MPs watching porn. Anyone. And then the women identified and said, no, it was him, it was actually the same one. Do you know what I mean? Everything was into it, so the joke sort of gets better, I think. Hi. Yeah, I just wanted to ask, because you were earlier talking about narratives and personally being half Russian, you follow a lot of what's happening in Russia and so you were saying that political satire, it's very much kind of canary in the coal mine for democracy. It's always the first victim. You can look at Egypt, you can look at Russia in the early 2000s. But so in terms of perspective, do you think that there's something that Britain is taking for granted, that British people are taking for granted, in your experience over 30 years and so we've become actually relatively powerless and we look at the government wanting to enforce this policy of sending immigrants to Rwanda, which before it was released, it would have been a perfect satir of classical. I mean, which government is going to send immigrants to a faraway country? That would have been perfect satire. Do you think that there's something so ridiculous about this government now that even satire can hardly dent it because it's literally doing what previously would have been satire? I mean, in that particular case, I think it would have been difficult. Sorry, I thought you hadn't finished. Yes, I mean, it is difficult in that particular case and the president of Rwanda was asked, why do you want to do this deal with Britain? He said, we have a shortage of young men in Rwanda. Quite dark really. I mean, funny, he didn't mean it funny. And so, yes, I mean, real life is often pretty crazy, but people have always said, you know, you can't satirise this figure, it's too much, real life is too bizarre. And I always quote this, my mother-in-law, who I love very dearly, she said to me, she said, Ian, I have never been so frightened as I am in these international times. And I said, Mary, you were a teenager in 1939. She said, oh yes, so I was. So you have to keep a slight sense of perspective. And I'm just very interested in this stuff. So when Twitter has us back and everyone calls each other fascists and said, can you stop calling each other fascists? There's a fantastic George Orwell essay written in 1943, he says, can we all stop calling each other fascists? They're real fascists over there. In your opinion, you can keep drawing. Do you have any thoughts as to why the Americans don't have the same like, love or interest in satire as we do over here? Because they're just so excited about everything and so positive. I don't know. They sort of have a go with Saturday Night Live, don't they? They have a little go. It does seem kind of quite gentle. Whenever I see Saturday Night Live and I'm not particularly a fan of it, I agree with you. I don't think that it's particularly biting satire. It's kind of like, here's a kind of funny way of doing this character and it's a kind of reasonable impression or whatever. I mean, I think you're right, but I think, you know, they're kind of, they just sort of want to be polite, I guess, you know, and kind of want to be nice and not too critical. And yeah, everything's awesome. Is it more of... I don't think they've had anybody great since George Carlin. And he had so many death threats and hate mail and he was hated by a lot of America and banned from a lot of America. And I think a lot of comedians are not willing to put their life on the line like he did or to suffer the way he did because of what he said on stage, even though he's one of the greats. Even for... He briefly had an incarnation in America on NBC and my friend Nick Newman and I, who were writing for it, we were very excited, we flew to America and we'd handed in this script and the vice president of NBC called us in. This was Ronald Reagan era. And he had the script and he said, are you guys suggesting the president of the United States is an asshole? And we said, yeah. And we were fired. So I was delighted. That was my one foray into working in the States. But he literally was this guy, he said, I can lose my wife, I can lose my job, I can lose my parking place. I mean, that's American TV. That's tough. There is a difference there. And I think they've got stand-ups who do it and they've got, I mean, there's the onion and there's sort of satirical print. But there isn't... It's not telly, it just doesn't get on, I don't think. Anyway, that's not a very helpful answer. Just like to, if you like, compare the office. The American series doesn't work for us over here, does it? And that's the office work for the American audience. The sense of humour is so different. I just interested in your suggestions as to why it is so different over there. Is it just because they lack some kind of sophistication? I can't possibly comment. I'm not sure. I mean, they've got Perelman and they've got the Marks Brothers and there is a tradition, a very sophisticated humour there. But my take is that in America what they're interested in is success. The American Dream basically is about people who make it. Britain, we just love failure. And the office is great because he's rubbish and he's working in a paper factory off the M4. And we think that's great. You know, look at all our classic sitcoms, Steptoe and Sun. I mean, they're all about people who sort of don't make it. And that's a sort of heroic British failure that I find very, very attractive. We're not aspirational in that sense, which is why when you get an administration or a government that thinks it's playing to entrepreneurial, get up and go, Britain kicks ass around the world, spirit. Half the country's going, oh, really? Oh, I think it's probably two times. And that's the bit I like. As satirists, how do you know when to draw the line and is anything off limits? Don't look at me. Yeah, things will be off limits. Definitely. I can't think what. But I mean, there's that thing about punching down. You know, I wouldn't... I mean, there's a lot of things I wouldn't draw about, actually. So, I mean, drawing about politicians is their easy fodder. They should be ripped apart. But would you draw people naked? Would you draw rude drawings of people? Are you asking? I'm actually offering. No, no, I don't draw. I mean, I'm just kind of thinking if there was a particular circumstance, but I can't actually think of anything. Well, for example, I suppose with those cartoons you've done there, because they were saying with the Angela Raine thing that she was doing the basic instinct thing, you could have done a more outrageous cartoon. But you obviously decided, I mean, you know, yeah, you decided, quite rightly in my view, not to do that, you know. But they were saying it's basic instinct with clothes on, so they were already making that distinction. So, I mean, it's so ridiculous in both ways. No, I don't think I'd draw naked people unless it served a purpose. But some people have gotten to trouble, haven't they? You know, Steve Bell is doing people naked. And with John Major it was more, wasn't it? Wasn't David Cameron like a condom? Yeah. That was a great observation, because he's got a very shiny face. But actually Steve Bell draws Boris only as a bum, his face as a bum, isn't it? But I think that's a bit limiting for... It is, because it's worth having a look at his face. Yeah, because it's very expressive. Yes, usually confusion. Oh my God, Susanna reads interviewing me. He was expecting sooty. I mean, Goddy was useless this morning. Did anyone watch it? Was it just me, an audience of one? It was me. Any other questions? The mention of spitting image earlier made me wonder, what do you think Margaret Thatcher would have made of the current crop? I think she would have been absolutely disgusted. I mean, I think she would have been disgusted actually, because I think, you know, Margaret Thatcher didn't have that kind of entitlement that this lot seemed to have, and actually neither did Theresa May. I mean, whatever you think of Theresa May, I think she sort of was, you know, and there were all sorts of things that she did that I really didn't agree with. I felt that she sort of had at heart some sort of moral core, whereas I just don't feel that... And I think Thatcher did too, you know, don't agree with it, but sort of feel like there was something there, but with people like Boris Johnson, it just seems like there is no moral hinterland or sort of accountability whatsoever, and I think Thatcher probably would have had something to say about that. Yeah, I think she would have thought there an extraordinary shower of spivs. It's the language she would have used, not me. No, they really are. And, you know, the procurement scandals, and the whole basis of being in politics in order to, you know, give it a bit of time and then go and make lots of money, or if necessary, make lots of money during, you know, the time you're there. That, I think, is sort of... It couldn't be less her model of government. And, you know, whether you agreed with her or not, what she was interested in was affecting public change. I don't believe this government is interested in anything much. I mean, the fact that the Prime Minister could write two letters, I mean, they're both in the appendix of Tim Shimpman's book, one of the arguing passionately for Brexit and one arguing passionately against Brexit, and he wasn't sure which one he was going to send. You know, this isn't satire, as you said earlier. This is fact. And that, I think, suggests we don't have an ideologically driven government. And if they haven't got any ideology, you say, okay, are they very good at detail? Is German pragmatism the key? No, they're utterly useless. It's such a, you know, gathered around her able people. And whereas Boris Johnson seems to have thought, well, you know, I'm a bit shit, so I'd better get people around me that are even shitter, so that I look good. And, you know, because they haven't got, you know, there's sort of like the blandness, the kind of brainlessness. It's just like, it's extraordinary. Yes, I mean, it's rare to find a collection of people where you have a trade secretary that Dover and Calais link up in some way. The sheer ineptitude of the people around him, I think, is extraordinary. And again, their sense of feeling will, you know, Matt Hancock, who just is hysterical now. And again, you say we shouldn't go on about what he looks like, but the fact that he's now wearing a black pony neck. I'm going to say he's now the milk tray man. But he thinks he's done his time. Yeah, oh yeah, he's back, he's back. Profumo was disgraced in the 60s, spent 27 years working for charity, attempting to come back. Matt Hancock, you know, five minutes in the broom cupboard, five minutes on the back benches. He wants his job back. It's just extraordinary and he cannot see. He cannot see why people might be annoyed with him. You're the health secretary. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Jan, you referred to this being a golden age, perhaps for satire, and Private Eye's been going 60 years with two editors. The current editor seems to be in fairly good shape from here. Speck-savers. Yeah, meantime, I mean, how do you see the shape of satire changing? Why are changing hereafter? And who will the drivers of that be? Who will the newie and hislops be going forward and other members of the panel indeed? Well, there's lots of lead and hungry-looking young people around who, um, one must discourage. No, I mean, I agree with you. I think, you know, the place is full of them. I'm very wedded to print and I absolutely love print and I love the way cartoons look in print, and I think print still has a space, but there's plenty of people online and plenty of people doing it differently elsewhere, which is great, and stand-up has evolved in a way that was sort of unheard of, unthought of 20 years ago. So it does change, but I, the thing I like is I can still go to it, I can still read it, I still look at it, and I think that's funny, that's good. I get the point of that. It's still recognisable as doing the same job that I would say that it's always done. Yeah, I wish I could see more kind of, like I was just saying earlier, I wish I could see more young women, more people of colour, you know, getting together and doing more satire, because I do still think that it is a bit sort of homogenous, and I would be excited, that's such an American word, I would be so excited to see some kind of, what Peter Cook described as some sappy, urgent, vibrant young satirist, when he was doing his impression of Macmillan. Yeah, I was sort of a sappy and urgent was a rather lovely thing to be, but yeah, I would love to see that, and I would applaud it, because you sort of think, how long can I go on doing, you know? I find on the circuit, there's more men that do satire than women. Men seem to be more interested in doing satire than women. It's not that women can't do it, they just don't seem to be that interested in it. I think that's true. I don't know if that's because they don't have many female satirist role models, men have more. Well, I think with political cartoonists, even I think 2018, there was an article written why other nove women political cartoonists, and it was all the stuff about women that just don't want to be as aggressive, or this sexist shit, essentially, and this is really not very long ago, and I know lots of female political cartoonists who were just kind of scratching at the doors, trying to get in, but there are about sort of six jobs, basically, in papers of regular cartoonists, and the guys are holding on to their positions for their life, I think. We've got Griselder and Kate Lamb who've joined before I did, both of whom are in regularly, and you know, there is unpleasant as anyone else, and I would be happy to say that. Yeah, but the Guardian employs few women on a freelance basis, and that's where I work when I do my cartoons, but the independent nun, the times, none, no female political cartoonists, and it's not because they're not there, they are there, I'm friends with lots of them, Instagram, et cetera, wherever, and in real life, so I do think there is somehow an issue for women pushing through rather than not interested. Well, again, sorry, on cartoonists, at the beginning of lockdown, I made a conscious decision that we would increase the number of cartoons that we ran in the magazine, because everybody needs a break, and I would have about 20% more, and a lot of people said, you'll have real problems, because there aren't any young cartoons, anyone different, and I said, you, if I offer them money, suddenly they'll all develop an extraordinary ability to draw, and I was right. Filling up 5%, it was no problem. There's a whole raft of new younger cartoonists, Zoom Rockmen, people like him, you know, just, I mean, they're absurdly younger, God, they're younger than you are, 19, they're gross, and there's a whole load of people and Fran Boyce, and there's loads of people who've come through who just think, you didn't do this before, you can do this, and you can do it, because there's a platform, and a lot of people, again, work online, and I saw a brilliant joke online this morning, by someone I thought, if you'd offered that to me, I'd have given you money, why are you doing this for free? It was parish, and it said his wife had left him and sent him a John Deere letter. I mean, that's really funny. You don't have to waste that online. Bee has a question now. Hi, a question right at the back. Can you hear me okay, yeah? I just wanted to ask you about the most admired world leader, possibly at the moment, President Zelensky, and obviously he brings a lot of personal qualities to a horrific situation, and he's a great leader, and he's a great leader, and he brings a lot of personal qualities to a horrific situation, but I just wondered if his background as a satirist and a comedian may be brought something unique and different to this situation in your opinion. Sorry, I didn't hear much to that. I think she was asking about whether Zelensky's experience, was it Zelensky's background as a Kelly, a satirist and a comedian has added to his qualities as a leader? That's really interesting. God, that would be great, wouldn't it? One could claim it retrospectively. I think it's made him brilliant in terms of communicating what people want from the role of a president in terms of not doing all the things that he's satirised in that sitcom, not being evasive, not changing his mind, not talking down to people. So his performance today has been almost faultless. That thing of leading from the front as well and being seen to be there in the thick of it, and not afraid to be on the front line and to own it all and not be hiding in a bunker. He's done a great job and I think he did have a sense of the performance of it. He's a brilliant communicator, isn't he? And his scripts are written by his team who were writing for him before. And his humour gives him a power that Putin doesn't have. And when he says to the European Parliament they say, what would you like? What would you like more of? And he says, well, not excuses. I mean, that's funny. You can imagine, you're selfie and I don't mean to embarrass you here, darling. But, you know, I mean... You suspect you do. I know, but I mean, if you think of like our satirists, if you think of people like Ian or Armando Ynuchy who are so well informed and, you know, when you were doing that select committee thing, I can't even remember who you had it in. Who was it? Well, who was next to me? No, who were you? We were in front of Chris Bryant. He was in the second jobs. The really difficult question should MPs have well-paid second jobs? Yes, yes. That's a tough one. My point is, you know, that Zelensky shows that satirists and comedians are generally very bright. It's always a comedian that wins celebrity mastermind. I came second. I did you. I lost to the weatherman. But I have to say, his specialist subject was Britney Spears, so it doesn't really count. My point is, I would like to see Ian Hislop at the front of R, you know, kind of installed in number 10. In a bunker about to die. Yeah, but I think it's true. I think Zelensky's brilliant. But I fear for him, I must say. Yeah, and I just do like the fact that he doesn't give the answer that everybody wants. So he says, can I have some air cover? And everyone says, oh, that would be very, very difficult. Can you ask for something else? So he says, can I have some air cover? And it's just that sort of timing as much as anything, isn't it? It's just so brilliant. Yeah. So that's the end. B, is that the end? One quick one, maybe. This lady here. I just wondered if you think that satire can inspire your political actions, just voting, writing letters, going to politicians, or might it act as a kind of relief of when you have that catharsis of laughing at it, did you feel a little well and maybe you don't write that letter or go out to vote on a rainy day? I think if you're lucky, it can do both. It can be a release file but not one that then removes the pressure. You feel better about it but I think it can also make people think yeah, that is what I think and I will now do something about that. It's difficult to claim people saying, why haven't you toppled the government? Why haven't you completely changed the bill? But sometimes, just sometimes it works. You take the Rishi Sunak incident his wife's father is operating a huge Indian company in Russia and profits coming back to this country. Everyone goes wild about it in this country some very, very funny stuff about it. It's so embarrassing. Embarrassing is the word that her father-in-law says Infosys isn't going to operate in Russia anymore. That's a result. That's it a week by embarrassing someone about their dad and everyone says, oh, why do you make it so personal? Why do you have a girl and his wife? Cos it works! You know, and so sometimes it can work. That would be my hope. Is that it? Oh, there's a man who wants to ask a question. Thanks. It's worth remembering actually that I think it was in Hungary I think it was in Hungary that the Prime Minister at the time or the President started making a speech from his balcony that the audience started actually laughing at him and that was the beginning of the end of that, was it Hungary? Romania? And do you remember laughing at leaders that she can have a profound effect? Well, that was Ceausescu, wasn't it? It was, that's right. So this laughter is worth I'm waiting for the day that Boris will be up in front of an audience and people will just start roaring with laughter at him. One of my favourite private eye covers is the Queen meeting Ceausescu saying and what do you do? And he said, I'm a mass murderer. She says, oh, how lovely. So that is the end everyone. Can you give it up for Jan Ravens? Tomorrow comes. Any moment and in his room. Extra, an extra huge thanks to Ceausescu for stepping in so briefly. Do catch her on tour. And private eye, 60 years of private eye is available outside. Thank you very much for coming and there are more events in the news exhibition event series please check them out. Thank you very much and good night.