The BBC’s new director general recently said that there was a leftwing bias in its output of topical satire, and that comedy shows should henceforth book more hilarious people who believe in Brexit. You couldn’t make it up, but where does “satire” come from?
For a long time the word was thought to be derived from the Greek saturos or satyr, a mixture of human and wild beast who lived in the woods. In classical “satyric” dramas, such goat-men or horse-men formed a bawdy but cowardly chorus, much like Tory backbenchers. Modern etymologists, however, relate “satire” instead to the Latin satura, short for lanx satura meaning “full dish” or a medley of ingredients, and its subsequent variant satira meaning a miscellany of poetry and prose on various subjects. So, as the producers of the rebooted Spitting Image know well, a “satire” is originally a kind of sketch show.
In the mean time, it might prove challenging for the BBC to find brilliant satirists among hardline conservatives, but one might be able to round up one or two satyrs – in the venerable figurative sense of a “lecherous or sexually rapacious man” (OED) – for future editions of The News Quiz.
• Steven Poole’s A Word for Every Day of the Year is published by Quercus.
