Malcolm Tucker, the fictional, sweary Downing Street enforcer from The Thick Of It, is “too good” to exist in the twisted world of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, his creator has said.
Peter Capaldi, the Scottish actor who played the dastardly bully in the hit TV series, said the attacks on Boris Johnson by his former Downing Street adviser were a tragic case of life imitating satirical art.
The scorned and sacked adviser Dominic Cummings has gone on a revenge mission against the Tory government, releasing Malcolm Tucker-style descriptions of the Prime Minister as a “gaffe machine”.
During a rant about political pundits on Friday, Cummings tweeted: “Why the f*** would [we] put a gaffe machine clueless about policy and government up to be grilled for ages, upside=0 for what?!”
Last week Cummings released Whatsapp messages from the Prime Minister describing his Health Secretary Matt Hancock as “totally f***ing useless”.
Interviewed by the BBC’s Nick Robinson on Sunday the Dr Who actor could not say what Malcolm Tucker’s reaction would be because “the language would be unusable”.
He added: “But I think in many ways what we’re seeing is like ‘The Thick Of It’ because of the level of vitriol and absurdity and ego that’s going on.”
“These are the people who are supposed to look after us and they’re behaving in a way which I think is not funny. I don’t even think Malcolm would exist in this world, I think he’s too good for this world.”
“But at the same time it’s beyond that, it’s a kind of tragi-comic situation without the comic. I think it’s beyond the joke.”
