Are we living in a post-satire era? It’s a question a lot of great comedians and satirists are asking themselves at the moment. Increasingly, in the world of politics and international affairs, reality is so bizarre, it almost moves past the ability to be satirised.
Remember Tina Fey’s portrayal of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live during the 2012 US presidential election, where she simply repeated the vice presidential candidate’s words, in all their bizarre hilarity? Or Alec Baldwin’s equally hilarious recreation of Donald Trump’s debate performances, where it is genuinely difficult to distinguish reality from satire?
Well, Ryan Tubridy’s guest this morning, the nomadic comedian, Bob Slayer, recalled how he indulged in his own blending of reality and satire at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where he and a friend decided, quite simply, and for purely satirical purposes, to read the entire Chilcott Report from beginning to end.
“A friend of mine, a comedian, rang me up and he said, ‘I’ve got this idea. Shall we read the Chilcott report at the Fringe. Is this going to be funny?’… We got a team together and we read the entirety of the Chilcott Report. 14 days it took us. 24/7. All sorts of people came along to read it.”
Remember the Chilcott Report? The devastating, 2.6 million-word, 12-volume inquest into Britain’s role in the Iraq war?
It’s been somewhat forgotten of late amidst the post-Brexit fallout, but the headlines when it was published, in July, 2016, made it clear that the decision-making process in the run-up to that war was so dysfunctional, it could almost be pure satire.
And pure satire it was to become, for Bob Slayer and his comedic partners.
Here's the Spiegeltent and Bob Slayer's Blundabus at @galwaycomedy What larks! pic.twitter.com/fNESKWgpjD
— Phillip Jupitus (@jupitusphillip) October 24, 2016
Bob is in Galway now for the Vodafone Comedy Carnival, and his path crossed with that of the Tubridy team, who are touring Ireland conducting auditions for the Late Late Toy Show. He is there with his unique BlundaBus, a 2003 London bus, which he has converted into a bar and a venue.
Recalling the media attention at the time around their decision to read the Chilcott report from beginning to end, Bob had this to say.
“It was interesting, at the start of doing it, a lot of the media attention was around questioning “why” we were doing this. Well, “why” was the operative word. “Why” did we go to an illegal war?”
Bob Slayer, it turns out, is a man with some comedy pedigree, the great great grandnephew of a British cultural and comedic icon, George Formby. He will be performing at the Vodafone Comedy Carnival in Galway between 25th and 31st of October.
But in the meantime, if you’d like to listen to the full chat with Ryan, click here.
