It’s a funny time to be making political comedy. In a way, the era of Brexigeddon and Trump has turned it into an unusually easy enterprise. At this year’s Edinburgh festival, it felt like standups only had to mention the referendum and a titter was guaranteed. “You could have just read out a list of things that have happened for an hour, and had a four-star show on your hands,” says comedian Matt Forde, whose own fringe set resisted the urge, instead crunching parliamentary machinations into a series of neat gags and uncanny impressions. For his next trick, Forde is attempting something even more ambitious: he’s fronting new comedy series Unspun, the latest attempt to bring political satire back to our screens.
Despite The Thick Of It skewering the political classes into oblivion, off-the-cuff, reactive satire has languished in this country in recent years, confined to ancient panel shows such as Have I Got News For You and the odd uncertain ensemble programme.
There’s certainly been nothing to rival the messianic US-based trio of Jon Stewart, John Oliver and Stephen Colbert, whose gag-spattered takedowns of the news are as righteous as they are rollicking. Recorded the day before broadcast for maximum topicality, Unspun will utilise their personality-led explainer model. But in many other ways Forde, a 33-year-old ex-political adviser whose besuited appearance belies a rather giddy manner, is planning to do things quite differently from his Stateside colleagues.
Like most satire, Unspun is concerned with publicly airing the stupidity and self-serving nature of politics, combining Forde’s take on the week’s events with reports from comedian correspondents and interviews with the likes of Owen Smith and Ruth Davidson. More unusually, though, it will be fuelled by a heady enthusiasm for those in charge. Forde is actually supportive of politicians, so much so that he’s even got some – cross-party rock quartet MP4 – to be his backing band on Unspun. “The subtext of that is politicians are a good thing,” he says.
This approach might not sound like the most foolproof recipe for speaking truth to power, the place where much political comedy gets its frisson. But as well as holding them to account, Forde is determined to re-humanise MPs for the good of the nation’s future. “I think political discourse has become fundamentally poisonous,” Forde says. During his time in politics he saw “decent people of all parties just worn down and broken by the relentless barricade of hatred that they face for taking difficult decisions. Why would ambitious, compassionate, driven people want to go into something so brutal?” As a result, in his show, Forde is determined to treat MPs as people first, representatives of ideas second. “I thought it would be great to create a place where they can come to show their human side.”
Unspun is partly based on The Political Party, an interview event and podcast that Forde founded three years ago. It’s had a strikingly high calibre of guest – Tony Blair was a recent booking – possibly because Forde practises what he preaches. He will usually tell the audience to be respectful to interviewees, while the general tone of the conversations is one of even-handedness and an overarching joviality: he asks the awkward questions, but one of his tension-eviscerating giggles is never far away.
It can be hard to stomach at times: the podcast has hosted Ukip politicians as well as Tommy Robinson in an episode that saw Forde challenge the anodyne picture the former EDL leader was painting of the movement, but also treat him with a deference he can’t have been used to. In Edinburgh, Forde recorded an episode with Brexiteer and Tory MP Tim Loughton, who was, at best, cavalier about the referendum result, cracking jokes and playing up for the crowd. Forde noticed the muted reaction, realising the audience “were struggling to get over the fact that they instinctively didn’t like him very much”, he says. “I thought he was superb.”
The comedian describes his own political views as “slap-bang in the centre”. It’s an outlook that’s a long way from where Forde’s foray into politics began at 14, when he joined the Socialist Workers Party. He left after a fortnight due to the “endless ranting”, he remembers. “I’d always thought of socialism as quite a poetic, gentle creed but you realise for some people – and this is very instructive for what’s happened to the Labour party now – it is militant and a lot of the things we associated with the hard right in British politics are also present on the hard left”. He also found “something slightly synthetic about a lot of the anger”.
He realised his own experience of disadvantage – a Nottingham childhood spent in a household dependent on benefits, alongside some “deeply violent” people – was not the same as those who were so furious about it. Instead, Forde turned to Labour and later began working for the party as an adviser during the Brown era. Power was slipping through the government’s fingers, and the job was hard, leaving Forde “exhausted by politics”. At the turn of the decade, he decided to move into comedy – which until then had been a hobby – full time. It’s not often that someone chooses standup for an easy life, but that’s clearly the effect politics can have on a person.
Nowadays, the worlds of politics and comedy don’t seem as far apart as they might have in 2011, when Forde brought his debut solo show, Dishonourable Member, to the fringe. It was the first time he’d combined his interest in politics with the tales of debauchery he was used to peddling. “Standup’s changed rapidly in the time that I’ve been doing it,” says Forde. Back then “it didn’t feel particularly out of date to be talking about drinking and stuff, but I think it feels really dated now to see comedians overly talk about hangovers or drugs or anything like that”.
Today, much lad comedy has been replaced by figures that seem closer to sages than jesters. Many are employed as broadsheet columnists where they will commentate on politics, and spend their sets denouncing the goings-on in the corridors of power. In the US, studies have shown that many rely on The Daily Show for political insight, while Twitter – a medium humming with jokes and pithy remarks – is how people follow unfolding political developments.
This all gives Unspun plenty of potential fodder but also high standards to meet. One priority is to come up with shareable segments, the means by which TV shows have begun to commandeer social media to their advantage. “Whether it’s John Oliver’s monologues or Corden’s Carpool Karaoke, they brighten people’s days up,” says Forde. “You watch that for three minutes, you feel better, you go back to work.” Harnessing the comedic potential of Corbyn is on the agenda, too. Forde has already nailed his impression, having observed that the Labour leader always looks like he can smell a roast cooking, but I wonder aloud if anyone has managed to meaningfully satirise him yet. Forde shows a rare steeliness: “I like to think I’ve found a way,” he says. The future of politics might depend on it.
Unspun With Matt Forde begins 10pm, Wednesday 14 September, Dave
