Last week, I blogged here about the fact that the Reuters news agency was investigating – for a second time – whether ‘President Obonjo’ (aka comedian Benjamin Bello) really is the president of an African country.
In fact, this time, the worrying suspicion was that he is actually the President of the whole of Africa and that he had threatened to invade the US in support of Donald Trump.
Reuters have today – presumably after a week of detailed research and fact-checking – come up with their conclusion… printed in full below…
Fact Check: Video of ‘African President’ American invasion is a comedy skit
By Reuters Fact Check
March 14, 2024
A video of comedian Benjamin Bankole Bello playing his character “President Obonjo of Lafta Republic” has been shared online as showing the “President of Africa” threatening to invade America over Trump’s prosecution.
The clip shared on Instagram shows Bello saying, in part, “If Biden and his people continue to prosecute Donald Trump, then I tell you this much, we will invade America.” The video is overlaid with text reading,“The President of Africa threatens to invade America over Biden’s corruption” and “Imagine Trump being so racist he had the backing of all of Africa and their President.”
Comments in response include: “But people would still say trump is racist and he’s the problem. Meanwhile you have Presidents from other countries defending the man because they know he’s still is rightfully so the COMMANDER AND CHIEF” and “He’s sending his soldiers to infiltrate via the open south border.”
The circulating clip is a snippet from a TikTok video posted by Bello on his account “presidentobonjo” on Oct. 4, 2023, after Trump appeared in court in a civil fraud case on Oct. 2.
The comedian regularly shares skits dressed as the same character on his social media profiles.
Ian Hawkins, a spokesperson for Bello, said in an email that President Obonjo is a comedy character created by the comedian and parodies world leaders. “The President often comments satirically on news events and current affairs,” Hawkins added.
Reuters has previously addressed another video of Bello’s character misrepresented online as the “African President.”
VERDICT
Satire. The video shows comedy character “President Obanjo” played by UK-based comedian Benjamin Bello.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team.
With all the misinformation swirling around, it is good to know that the Reuters news agency takes its journalistic responsibilities seriously when supplying worldwide news and media sources with facts.
But a joke’s a joke.
Reuters employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide.
In August last year, Reuters fact-checked President Obonjo, a British stand-up comedy act that has been performing for over ten years.
The shtick is that President Obonjo is the leader/dictator of the Lafta Republic in Africa.
So convincing did many people (largely Americans) find this act that they believed President Obonjo was real.
Last August, Reuters’ initial fact-check was triggered when prominent right-wing commentator Melissa Tate shared a video of President Obonjo calling on America “to release Donald Trump immediately”.
Melissa Tate shared his online appeal with her 530,000 followers on Twitter as if it were real.
She captioned the clip: “African President expresses sadness of the loss of democracy in America following the Biden regime’s arrest of a former President & the disrespect of a mugshot. The world is watch[ing] the fall of America in amazement.” (I blogged about it all at the time HERE.)
When Reuters carried out a fact-check and discovered for certain last August that Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award winner President Obonjo was indeed ‘just’ a comedy act – even if a very good comedy act – that seemed to be the end of it.
But, this week, Reuters was sleuthing again – double or maybe triple checking that the good President was not a real African head of state masquerading for some inexplicable reason as a UK comedian.
It takes a big stretch of the imagination, but Reuters’ experienced team was prepared to make that stretch.
This time, they were checking a TikTok video (shared on Instagram) in which President Obonjo threatened to invade the US “if Biden and his people continue to prosecute Donald Trump”. It was re-posted by humanities_truth_ with the line “The president of Africa threatens to invade America over Biden’s corruption”.
A member of President Obonjo’s fictional Ministry of Media Relations was able to reassure Reuters that such an invasion is not imminent:
“Thank you for your enquiry. I am pleased to confirm that President Obonjo is indeed a character created by the comedian Benjamin Bello and the clip you provided is of him commenting in character on the news.
“President Obonjo of Lafta Republic is a comedy character who has appeared in a British TV special on ITVX and at numerous comedy festivals in the UK. The President often comments satirically on news events and current affairs. It is a sign of the times that a comedian who parodies world leaders is hard to distinguish from a genuine politician. So long as politicians keep clowning, it’s entirely fair for President Obonjo to play them at their own game, with better jokes and less collateral damage. For more information please see www.presidentobonjo.com”
I fear (or do I mean hope?) that, in US election year, this may not be the last we hear of Obonjo-gate. Of course, if Reuters were able to uncover the truth, it would be a real coup for them.
Far be it from me to say my blog is widely read – it could, after all, be merely coincidence – but, a few brief hours after I posted yesterday’s blog on comedy character President Obonjo, there was a military coup in Gabon, overthrowing President Ali Bongo, the namesake of the famed UK comedy magician and former President of the Magic Circle Ali Bongo…. This BBC News report has appeared (correct at the time of posting)
It has been suggested that this coup could have been a case of mistaken identity, with the CIA, confused by the current flurry of online Obonjo publicity in the US, overthrowing someone they thought was President Obonjo to undermine the Donald Trump campaign…
Or not.
Gabon coup: Army officers say they are taking power
By George Wright & Kathryn Armstrong
Army officers have appeared on national television in Gabon to say they have taken power.
They said they were annulling the results of Saturday’s election, in which President Ali Bongo was declared the winner.
The electoral commission said Mr Bongo had won just under two-thirds of the votes in an election the opposition argued was fraudulent.
His overthrow would end his family’s 53-year hold on power in Gabon.
Gabon is one of Africa’s major oil producers, while nearly 90% of the country is covered by forests.
Twelve soldiers appeared on television early on Wednesday morning, announcing they were cancelling the results of the election and dissolving “all the institutions of the republic”.
They added that the country’s borders had been closed “until further notice”.
If confirmed, this would be the eighth coup in former French colonies in Africa in the past three years.
However, most of the others have been further north, in the Sahel region where an Islamist insurgency has led to rising complaints that the democratically elected governments were failing to protect the civilian populations.
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said her country was following the situation closely, while the European Union’s foreign policy chief said a military takeover would increase instability in Africa.
“This is a big issue for Europe,” said Josep Borrell.
Meanwhile, French mining group Eramet, which employs thousands of people in Gabon, said it had stopped all work in the country for security reasons.
The soldiers who announced the apparent coup said they were from the Committee of Transition and the Restoration of Institutions and represent security and defence forces in the country.
One of the soldiers said on TV channel Gabon 24: “We have decided to defend peace by putting an end to the current regime.”
This, he added, was down to “irresponsible, unpredictable governance resulting in a continuing deterioration in social cohesion th,at risks leading the country into chaos”.
The sounds of loud gunfire could be heard in the country’s capital, Libreville, following the broadcast.
A resident in the western city of Port Gentil told the BBC World Service’s Newsday programme he was woken by a friend who told him about the soldier’s broadcast.
“There was a communique being played again and again on the two national TV channels,” they said, adding that it appeared that all parts of Gabon’s defence and security forces were involved.
BBC World Service Africa editor Will Ross says this suggests the coup is perhaps not “done and dusted” and there will be some resistance.
There was no immediate response by the government to the soldiers’ announcement and the whereabouts of Mr Bongo are unknown.
Internet access was suspended following Saturday’s election for security reasons, but was restored shortly after the apparent takeover. A curfew is also in place.
Ali Bongo was declared the winner of Saturday’s election, which the opposition argued was fraudulent
As in previous general elections in Gabon, there were serious concerns about the process in Saturday’s vote.
Main opposition candidate Albert Ondo Ossa complained that many polling stations lacked ballot papers bearing his name, while the coalition he represents said the names of some of those who had withdrawn from the presidential race had still been on the ballot sheet.
Campaign group Reporters Without Borders said foreign media had been banned from setting foot in the country to cover the vote.
Both of Mr Bongo’s previous wins were disputed as fraudulent by opponents. This time, controversial changes were made to voting papers just weeks before election day.
Mr Bongo came to power when his father Omar died in 2009.
In 2018, he suffered a stroke which sidelined him for almost a year and led to calls for him to step aside.
The following year, a failed coup attempt saw mutinying soldiers sent to prison.
Malcolm Hardee Award winning British comedian Benjamin Bankole Bello has been performing as fictional African dictator President Obonjo of the LAFTA Republic for almost 12 years.
For the last five days, he has been trolled by both Trump supporters and Trump opponents on the internet.
I talked to him this morning…
JOHN: So you did your comedy show at this month’s Edinburgh Fringe…
BENJAMIN: Yes, I took my show African Zelensky up there for ten days. So many things happened. I lost my luggage; I found it again; Ukranians came to the show; one Ukranian wrote back with a 3-page document about my show; then I had Russians come to the show who said they were going to tell Putin I was supporting him and I said No No No…
I didn’t go to Edinburgh to impress or get reviews. I went there to test my show. And it went very well.
Obonjo re Trump arrest on TikTok
Then, of course, Donald Trump got arrested so one morning, in my bedroom, with two flags behind me, I did a TikTok video saying basically I’m a friend of Donald Trump. I’m very worried about the state of democracy. I pretended I didn’t know he had been released and I gave the American government an ultimatum: RELEASE HIM IMMEDIATELY! THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO SILENCE YOUR OPPONENT!
I just uploaded it to TikTok and thought that was it.
But, within a couple of days, the video had gone viral and got almost a million views.
I thought: Oh, OK…
But, a couple of days later, someone called Melissa Tate, a Right Wing Conservative blogger with about half a million followers on Twitter, blogged to say an African president supports Donald Trump.
Before I knew what was happening, there were about 60,000 reTweets – some from black Trump supporters, some from people who don’t support Trump but think MAGA supporters are stupid.
Some of the non-MAGA supporters did some fact checking on me to see if I am a real president and it is hilarious. The comments are just comedy gold! There is a debate going on between MAGA supporters who are for Trump and those who are not for Trump and people within the Republican Party who are saying: How could you have reTweeted a fictional dictator? It shows you guys are stupid.
I have had people confuse me with President Obasanjo of Nigeria and President Ali Bongo of Gabon. Some people even confused me with President Obama… They don’t even know what their ex-President looks like!
They’ve been visiting my website and yesterday Reuters got in touch to find out who was behind my video – Am I a comedian? Am I a president? They could see there’s a comedian Benjamin Bankole Bello who plays the character of President Obonjo. But can you clarify? Because people online are taking the video seriously…
Someone calling himself Ford News with around 100,000 followers posted that I “was never a voice of democracy and ran out of his country. He was a brutal dictator.”
I wrote back saying “I want you to tell me within 24 hours where you got the information that I am a brutal dictator and that I fled my country and came to the UK or I will contact my lawyers.” He deleted the Tweet.
Unbelievable! The key thing for me, John, is that, in terms of social media … I am sitting in my bedroom with two flags behind me, I am broadcasting to the world and people believe I am a real African president. It shows that social media has blurred the line between what is true and what is false.
Then there’s the racism. Confusing me with other black presidents in Africa. Crazy. Absolutely crazy.
JOHN: Do Presidents Obasanjo and Ali Bongo look anything like you?
Presidents Obasanjo of Nigeria (left) and Ali Bongo of Gabon (right) (Photos: Helene C. Stikkel/US Department of Defense + US Department of State)
BENJAMIN: They look nothing like me. Ali Bongo has been in power for years and he has had a stroke. He doesn’t want to leave office. They are both older than me and one of them has had a stroke. A stroke! (LAUGHS)
JOHN: Well, you are very convincing as President Obonjo.
BENJAMIN: There was a review of my Edinburgh Fringe show which said it was “so convincing it almost broke the walls of satire”.
Americans have been trolling me for the past five days. Including black Trump supporters. They’ve tagged Donald Trump about me. I don’t know what Donald Trump thinks. They have tagged Kevin McCarthy, the House Speaker. They have tagged Tucker Carlson, the guy who used to work for Fox News. Someone told me “You have trolled the entire GOP from your bedroom in Britain”.
Despite the fact some people have said, “Oh, he is a comedian,” people have still said, “Oh, I don’t care. He’s actually speaking the truth as a President.”
JOHN: Perhaps you could be the compromise presidential candidate for the Republican Party. You could claim you were born in the US. There’s a chance no-one would check.
BENJAMIN: You’re pushing me to go to America.
JOHN: Seems reasonable. If democracy crashes there, they will need an experienced dictator. You walk the walk and talk the talk convincingly.
The day after this blog was posted, there was a coup in Gabon, overthrowing President Ali Bongo – see my blog HERE
(WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS AT LEAST ONE OFFENSIVE WORD; DON’T READ FURTHER IF IT IS GOING TO SCARE YOU)
Jerry Sadowitz’s 1987 album Gobshite
The aftershock of The Pleasance venue cancelling the second of Jerry Sadowitz’s two comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe rumbles on.
Yesterday’s blog was a transcript of what I said in an interview with LBC Radio yesterday morning.
As a reminder, the venue’s jaw-dropping Doublethink ‘explanation’ for cancelling Sadowitz’s show was:
“The Pleasance is a venue that champions freedom of speech and we do not censor comedians’ material… the material presented at his (Jerry Sadowitz’s) first show is not acceptable… This type of material has no place on the festival and the Pleasance will not be presenting his second and final show.”
After criticism, the venue has now issued a second carefully-worded (I emphasise carefully-worded) statement including the frankly chilling:
“In a changing world, stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged.”
I have italicised “whether performed in character or not”.
As people who have actually seen Jerry Sadowitz shows over the last 30 years know (as opposed to those who have not seen the act) his confrontational delivery sets out to affront. It is clear he is being offensive as an act, for an effect.
He used to open his shows with: “Nelson Mandela – What a cunt!” presumably just to set the tone while the esteemed Mr Mandela was alive.
The Pleasance knew that Jerry Sadowitz’s act was – and would be – confrontational and intentionally offensive. Always has been. Indeed, it was advertised by Jerry and by The Pleasance as such. And they have staged his shows before.
The Pleasance stages theatrical performances as well as comedy.
To repeat with additional italicisation:
“In a changing world, stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged.”
This means – and, yes, it can only logically mean – that character comedy such as Al Murray’s comic creation The Pub Landlord and Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge character should not be allowed to express their ‘unacceptable’ stories and views.
Both on-stage/screen characters often express views which are not the performer’s. Jerry Sadowitz’s on-stage performances – though more extreme – also include views which are equally and clearly not his own.
First they came for the words and I said nothing; then they came for the stories and I said nothing; then they came for the thoughts and I could say nothing.
“…stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged…”
Vast swathes of British drama would presumably be deemed unacceptable because to express offensiveness would itself be unacceptable, even if the offensiveness expressed was by a character. That’s the end of parody, satire and irony, then. Context becomes irrelevant.
A drama – or indeed a comedy – about Hitler would not and should not be allowed to include the character of Hitler expressing any racist views. So Hitler’s thoughts and beliefs could not be shown to be vile because the thoughts and the expression of those thoughts would be in themselves too offensive to utter.
Last night on GBNews, Andrew Doyle’s Free Speech Nation, with comics Leo Kearse and Josh Howie, discussed The Pleasance’s first steps on the Road to Hell.
Andrew Doyle is a former writer for the comedic Jonathan Pie character.
Someone I know tells me they won’t watch this clip because they won’t watch (their words) “right wing” GBNews.
For those who won’t watch the nationally-transmitted GBNews, at one point Andrew Doyle, who is gay, says:
“There’s always something in a Jerry Sadowitz show that makes you think: That’s too far! He couldn’t possibly have just said that!
“And that’s the point. That’s the context.
“I remember sitting there watching him do this TEN MINUTE rant about the evils of homosexuals and the disgusting things that they get up to behind closed doors and it was hilarious and (in theory) so offensive to people like me.
“He’s also incredibly anti-Semitic. He’s Jewish!
“That should give you a clue about what he’s doing there…”
Later, Doyle says:
“I heard, by the way, that the complaints mostly came from members of staff at the venue.”
I have no way of knowing if that’s true but, according to the BBC, The Pleasance said that “unacceptable abuse” was later directed towards some staff on Saturday from people phoning to criticise the cancellation.
Some members of the public complained about the show, so it was cancelled…
Some members of the public complained about the show being cancelled, so did The Pleasance bow to their individual views? No.
Presumably The Pleasance places more importance on the opinions of their temporary staff on the night and after the night than on the reportedly 600 punters who chose to pay to attend and see the show, which had up-front warnings from both The Pleasance and Sadowitz about it being offensive.
Incidentally, the show was titled: Not For Anyone…
Yesterday, Jerry Sadowitz put a video online promoting his upcoming comedy tour…
…and he also Tweeted, via @RealJSadowitz, a comment on The Pleasance’s actions.
“The Pleasance is a venue that champions freedom of speech and we do not censor comedians’ material… the material presented at his first show is not acceptable…”
“In a changing world, stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged.”
First they came for the words and I said nothing; then they came for the thoughts and I could say nothing.
In yesterday’s blog, writer/performer Andrew Doyle – who, for three years, co-wrote for the parody TV reporter character Jonathan Pie – talked about his new satire My First Little Book of Intersectional Activism, a faux children’s publication written in character by ‘Titania McGrath’ the ‘woke’ Feminist activist Andrew created for a parody Twitter account. He has described her as “a militant vegan who thinks she is a better poet than William Shakespeare”.
She is named after Titania, queen of the fairies in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Andrew has said “it’s quite appropriate that she is named after the queen of the fairies” because “the people who promote this hyper inclusive culture are fantasists… all of this ‘woke culture’ is an utter fantasy world”.
Andrew Doyle and Titania McGrath – No Left or Right.
JOHN: So Titania McGrath is “an intersectional warrior queen”. I am a simple soul who can’t keep up. What does “intersectional” mean?
ANDREW: Intersectionality is a branch of Feminism that originated last century with a woman called Kimberlé Crenshaw who is a legal scholar.
There was a dispute in court between General Motors and some black female employees… General Motors’ defence in court was “We are not racist, because we can point to our black male employees. And, look, we’re not sexist because we’ve got all these white women employees.”
But, of course, black women fell through the gap.
So Kimberlé Crenshaw created this analogy of being in the middle of an intersection – a crossroads – where you can be hit by the traffic from more than one direction – in terms of race AND in terms of gender. So a black woman can be subject to racism AND sexism whereas a white woman is only subject to sexism not racism.
As a visual image and an analogy, it is very helpful. But it has now morphed into this kind of religion – a theoretical religion that effectively ends up pitting minority groups against each other – and formulating a kind of hierarchy of grievance.
And that’s not helpful for anyone.
When I talk about intersectionality, I’m talking about the current manifestation of it, not how it was originally intended.
JOHN: Is it another word for ‘woke’?
Andrew/TitaniaMcGrath’s 2019 book
ANDREW: The evolution of Woke is really interesting. In the various Black Civil Rights struggles of the 20th century, it had a very positive meaning which was simply to be alert to injustice, especially racialism. Then it was hijacked around 2010/2011 by certain types of very intolerant, illiberal, totalitarian type of Social Justice activists and it started to mean ALL of their causes: LGBT, women, trans, everything… and opposition to freedom of speech.
So to be ‘Woke’ became something completely different.
Then, what happened was that people like me started taking the piss out of the word Woke and I (as Titania McGrath) wrote a book Woke: A Guide to Social Justice and, through Jonathan Pie, we did a live tour where there was a whole section on Woke. So you had people ridiculing Woke.
And then the next evolution was when Guardian columnists and people on the Left who had always used the word to describe themselves started pretending they never had. They did this weird revisionist thing. They started saying “Woke is just a Right Wing fantasy. It’s a word that Right Wing people and conservatives have invented to mock Social Justice and to mock Equality.”
Afua Hirsch wrote a Guardian piece saying the word Woke is only used by Right Wing people. I remember replying on Twitter with some screenshots of lots of Guardian articles where they used Woke to describe themselves.
But because Woke has been ridiculed so much, they have moved away from the word and now what you are left with is just people on the Right and conservatives who use the word as a slur.
In a sense, that’s why the new Titania book doesn’t mention Woke in the title – It’s about ‘Intersectional Activism’.
JOHN: The Contents page of the book is very interesting. It’s very rare to see Torquemada and Nelson Mandela next to Hillary Clinton and Joseph Stalin.
ANDREW: The whole point of the book is that Titania is going through the Woke icons of history: all the people she respects. Not just the obvious Woke people – like Sam Smith, Brie Larson, Greta Thunberg – alongside historical figures like Emeline Pankhurst and Joseph Stalin.
I find it incredible when Leftists do these very contorted leaps of logic in order to try to justify Stalinism.
She also has Mary Whitehouse in there because I believe the Woke movement is the obvious intellectual heir to Mary Whitehouse in terms of their belief that popular culture needs to be censored otherwise the masses will be corrupted. It’s an identical view.
Torquemada, right-on trail-blazer of Cancel Culture?
Torquemada also makes sense, because he would burn heretics at the stake if they had the wrong ideas about the world. That is Cancel Culture. He is the pre-cursor to Cancel Culture. In particular, the Inquisition targeted scientists and people who were trying to make points that didn’t ally with their world view. Nowadays, of course, activists are trying to ‘de-colonise’ science because they believe science is a Western patriarchal, heterosexist construction and the phrase they use is “New ways of knowing”.
We talk about this ‘Post Truth’ Society. If you think about the way Donald Trump will deny something he said last week, when anyone can just go to YouTube and SEE and HEAR that he said it… It’s incredible. And that is exactly what is happening among the Leftist Identitarians.
A few weeks ago, CNN did a report from Kenosha, Wisconsin, saying “These are largely peaceful protests” and, in the background were burning buildings and burning cars.
JOHN: You identify as Left Wing…
ANDREW: I don’t identify as anything, really. Objectively speaking, a lot of my views particularly when it comes to the economy and the Welfare State are on the Left. I suppose I have more culturally conservative ideas about education and the Arts, but then so did George Orwell and no-one accused him of being a rabid Right Winger.
There are some good ideas on the Left, some good ideas on the Right. As long as you’re not enslaved to an ideology, you’ll be able to recognise them. If you ARE enslaved to an ideology, then you are not thinking for yourself. You’re taking your cues from an existing set of rules and I don’t trust that.
JOHN: I blame the French for Left and Right and making it seem like it’s about opposites. I always think of it as a circle.
ANDREW: A lot of my friends on the Left see the Woke movement as a bourgeois luxury. It’s no longer about Left and Right. That argument is obsolete. But people are stuck in this mindset of what Left and Right used to mean about 40 or 50 years ago.
Titania’s latest book… Coming next year will be Andrew’s own Culture War book
JOHN: Why did you stop co-writing Jonathan Pie? An argument?
ANDREW: No. I did it for three years. I don’t believe in doing things for too long. I don’t anticipate Titania McGrath going on for much longer. If it does, it’ll have to develop into something else.
JOHN: So what next that will be intellectually stimulating for you?
ANDREW: Well, at the moment, I’m writing a book about the Culture War. It will be out in Spring 2021. That’s a non-fiction book and it’s my big focus at the moment. Trying to encapsulate what I’ve been writing about for the last five years, really. But where we are now and where we go from here.
Andrew Doyle is an interesting and controversial writer/performer.
He’s a stand-up comic in his own right. He co-wrote the Jonathan Pie character for three years. He currently writes political columns for Spiked internet magazine et al. And he writes and Tweets as the character Titania McGrath.
Until the coronavirus struck down live comedy, he also co-ran monthly Comedy Unleashed shows in London’s East End. They were billed as “The Home of Free-Thinking Comedy”.
For the last three nights, Comedy Unleashed has returned to the Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green. They were restricted under COVID rules to only having one-third of the venue’s capacity audience, so they ran a show on two consecutive nights. Both shows sold out well in advance – within a day of tickets being on sale – and they added a third night.
I had seen the non-existent Titania McGrath (played by actress Alice Marshall) perform at Comedy Unleashed last year. A live tour was planned for March this year but, because of COVID, it has now been postponed until next March. Coronavirus allowing.
This is the first of a two-part blog…
JOHN: So My First Little Book of Intersectional Activism says its target audience is six month old to six-year-old females… They are going to have trouble reading it.
ANDREW: It points out in the opening chapter that Titania doesn’t believe in talking down to children. So she will use words like “intersectional” because she thinks here is an innate wisdom in childhood, which is why she’s such a great fan of Greta Thunberg. She says that, when she was a baby, her first words were: “Seize the means of production”. She believes babies have this innate politicised wisdom.
Of course, what it means is that kids can’t read the book. Although a copy was sent to a friend of mine recently and her husband assumed, from the design of the book, that it was for their 4-year-old daughter and gave it to her. She was delighted.
But then her mother had to explain to her that it wasn’t for her and, of course, it’s full of swearing, so… It’s marketed to look like a children’s book. It has all the accoutrements of children’s literature. But I hope in a way kids don’t get hold of it.
JOHN: Might bookshops put it on the wrong shelves?
“I thought they were in on the joke…”
ANDREW: A couple of weeks ago, an American bookstore posted a display of all their favourite books about diversity and inclusion and Titania McGrath’s first book Woke: A Guide to Social Justice was there, next to Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo and all the rest of them. At first, I thought they were in on the joke. But no. When they found out it was a satirical book, they took the Tweet down and presumably the display down and also took the book off their website so you can’t even buy it from that bookstore any more. They were obviously very angry about it
JOHN: One of the drawbacks of very sophisticated satire is that people may actually take it for real.
ANDREW: Even today, some people think Titania is real. There are all sorts of people out there who haven’t heard of her, which is great: the joke can keep going. I like getting into arguments as her with people who don’t know.
JOHN: You like getting into arguments generally?
ANDREW: Actually, I don’t, because I’m a very non-confrontational person. It’s something I avoid as much as possible in my life. But, through Titania, I’m not getting into an argument. I’m enacting a character. So that’s fine.
JOHN: Does that mean Jonathan Pie and Titania McGrath are ways to be aggressive and argumentative without putting yourself personally under pressure?
ANDREW: I suppose you’re really asking does that explain my attraction to the satirical genre? But I don’t think it does. I don’t think I’m looking for an outlet to be confrontational. It’s just a corollary of satire; you can’t avoid it.
When you’re writing satire you are exposing what you perceive to be the follies of Society and, by doing so, you’re bound to make enemies – particularly because you tend to be having a go at people with some sort of cultural or political power.
I don’t think satire can exist without offending people. Unfortunately, it’s a by-product of what I do, but that does not equate to having a confrontational personality. I go out of my way to avoid conflict in real life.
JOHN: Your work isn’t a way of getting something out of your system?
ANDREW: Probably my stand-up does that more. Because you get to embody a version of yourself that doesn’t exist. Often I can exaggerate my worst features. My onstage persona is a lot more waspish and – yes – more confrontational. Maybe – possibly – that’s me enacting the type of person I wish I could be.
JOHN: How does Alice Marshall cope with this? She must get hassle for saying things as Titania McGrath that she didn’t write and maybe doesn’t believe.
ANDREW: I spoke to Alice about this a couple of days ago and what was interesting was that she told me she did NOT get any hassle. I get a lot of abuse online but I think she doesn’t because people recognise she’s an actor.
JOHN: Is what Titania says going to change anybody’s opinions?
ANDREW: It depends what you mean. I had one woman who claimed I had effectively de-radicalised her. That kind of thing is very gratifying.
Satire does believe it can make a difference, otherwise you wouldn’t do it. But does it make a difference or just annoy people more? That has always been a conflict in my head.
When I get emails from people thanking me for standing up to this current creeping authoritarianism, that’s really gratifying and a good way to offset the anger that Titania generates.
JOHN: If you can’t change people’s minds, would you be just as happy simply annoying people?
ANDREW: No. I DO try to change people’s minds. That’s why I write political articles and articles about culture. I’m not doing that just to get it off my chest. More than anything, I’m interested in discussion and persuading people of my view – and also refining my own view.
By putting my argument out there in the most persuasive way I can, people will come back at me with counter-arguments that either refine what I believe or make me realise where I’ve gone wrong. And that is a really positive thing.
We are advised to wash our hands for at least 20 seconds (Photo by Nathan Dumlao via UnSplash)
SUNDAY 29th MARCH
I woke at around 0530 this morning. I live with my grandfather. He had been out late last night and upstairs, from my bed, I could hear him opening the front door downstairs, then coming up the creaking wooden stairs. Then I woke up. There was a strong wind outside making creepy noises. My grandfather died in the 1970s.
Most supermarkets now have an hour at the beginning or end of the day set aside for older people and/or people in vulnerable categories and/or NHS staff. I was in the local Iceland store this afternoon and got talking to a man at a safe distance across a frozen food cabinet. He told me he lives in Pimlico and, last week, someone was mugged in Pimlico and their NHS pass was stolen. Apparently true. Just the NHS pass.
MONDAY 30th MARCH
Yesterday afternoon, I had a FaceTime chat with a friend’s 8-year-old daughter. It lasted 1 hour 19 minutes and she is the most sensible person I have talked to since the coronavirus crisis started. Facebook and Twitter are awash with self-pity and paranoia.
The number of known UK deaths from COVID-19 was announced today as 1,408.
Things perked up later when the extraordinarily talented Romanian entertainer Dragos Mostenescu posted the first in a series of videos about his family and being self-isolated by the coronavirus crisis.
TUESDAY 31st MARCH
In the current coronavirus crisis, we are told only to contact our GP (local doctor) in a real emergency.
Most things in life depend on your viewpoint. Take this online posting from an Online COVID-19 Mutual Aid Group in an expensive area of London:
Hello, my wife and I have been asked by our GP to self-isolate as we are showing symptoms of a viral infection. Our problem is we do not know any neighbours being newish to the zone who can shop for us and we require dog food. Our dog has IBS – Irritable Bowel Syndrome – so she can only eat pasta and veg (broccoli, cauliflower & sprouts). If anybody can help with this plea we would welcome your contact. Many thanks.
The reaction of the person who told me was: “Honestly! People!So well connected they’ve actually seen their GP! Human beings can’t get pasta to eat let alone dogs! Middle Class entitled First World problems! Give the dog some bloody dog food, not vegan muck and it’ll soon feel better…”
A website satire not too far from reality
That reaction seems pretty reasonable to me. But, seen from the point of view of the isolated couple in a new neighbourhood, caring about their dog, their plea is not unreasonable either.
This might not be a total fantasy. Many years ago, a friend with a friend who worked in the A&E Department of a hospital told me Saturday nights had a high incidence of this type of thing including people misunderstanding the physical nature of fish…
Fish can only go one way…
You can stick a (small) fish head-first up your bottom but – remember they have scales – you cannot pull it out… Result… a visit to the local hospital’s A&E Department… And people think coronavirus is bad…
WEDNESDAY 1st APRIL
Back to reality today. A Junior Doctor in the NHS Tweeted: “Last night I certified far more deaths than I can ever remember doing in a single shift. The little things hit you: a book with a bookmark in, a watch still ticking, an unread text message from family.Pandemic medicine is hard.”
The number of daily coronavirus deaths in the UK in the last 24 hours has increased by 563.to 2,352.
A friend who lives in central London, who was ill for a week or more and is just-about getting over it emailed me:
I have definitely had it, John. Without a doubt. All the symptoms – fever for the first week, complete loss of taste/smell, dry cough, aching all over. The GP more or less confirmed it on the phone. The fever comes back sporadically. But the worst thing is not having a working nose.
I’m sure I got it on March 8th when I went to an event with my two girlfriends who also got ill at the same time as me. One is now in hospital.
There is no guarantee that one can’t get it again but the hope is that, like with other viral illnesses, I will have immunity. If there were an antibody test, I would take it.
No masking the truth… (Photograph by Ashkan Forouzani via UnSplash)
The medical people are definitely mentioning the effect on taste and smell, certainly in the things I read and my and my friend’s GPs both said that’s the clincher. It is quite different from losing your sense of smell with a cold. It is just total. If you gave me two slices of bread, one spread with Marmite and the other with Nutella, I could not taste the difference.
Smell is a useful sense – I am only now realising how much I rely on it. I can’t smell whether food has gone off, whether something is burning in the oven, whether a tee-shirt needs washing. With food I never used to throw things out on the Best By or Use By date – if it smelled OK, I would eat it. Now, not so confident.
I am fine now except nose and the odd night fever. I think once over it, one is over it. It takes a couple of weeks. If you get lung complications like my friend (and another friend who is so weak he can’t get from bed to loo and hasn’t eaten for ten days) it’s fucking horrible, but I didn’t thankfully.
My cousin only has loss of smell but the two people who work for him also got it (at the same trade fair) – both young. One got a light dose like me; the other (53 years old and a fit runner) floored by it.
One can see that if one is old or infirm, this would see you off. Some friends who are Junior Doctors are very frightened of it as they’ve seen so many people with it.
Martin Soan practises his planned ascent of Mount Everest
THURSDAY 2nd APRIL
I am desolate.
Comic Martin Soan had planned an ascent of Mount Everest tomorrow. Now he has called it off. Only a week after he called off a concert at the Albert Hall.
These are the facts you pick up when you are isolated in your home and only allowed out very occasionally.
“I am quite happy it’s low, but have no idea why”
FRIDAY 3rd APRIL
There are 3,605 confirmed coronavirus deaths in the UK now: 684 in the last 24 hours.
The normal resting heart rate for adults over the age of 10 years, including older adults, is between 60 and 100 beats per minute (bpm). Highly trained athletes may have a resting heart rate below 60 bpm, sometimes reaching 40 bpm.
My resting heart rate (according to my Apple Watch) is in the low 50s – around 53/53/54. I am no athlete.
I am quite happy it is low but have no idea why.
SATURDAY 4th APRIL
On Wednesday, my friend in Central London had mentioned another friend who was so weak “he can’t get from bed to loo and hasn’t eaten for ten days”. He was admitted to hospital last night, diagnosed with COVID-19 related double viral pneumonia.
Another friend who lives in rural tranquillity in Sussex tells me she has heard tales (by telephone) in the village about joggers hassling walkers, spitting and coughing near people etc etc.
I had to tell her that Borehamwood, where I live – administratively in Hertfordshire but really on the edge of London – has always seemed to me to be surprisingly not anti-social.
Borehamwood – “It is really culturally an Essex town”
It is awash with secondary schools and Yoofs and it is really culturally an Essex town, but there is almost no graffiti. I think the aspiring anarchists must go somewhere else to be anti-social… Not something they can do at the moment, so I dunno where they are. There is no particular sign of Yoofs on the streets.
All I can imagine is that they are staying at home snorting cocaine or shooting-up heroin – both allegedly normally available in town – but this lockdown must surely have screwed the coke, crack and smack distribution system and it sure as hell must have put burglars out of work – everyone is always at home now…
These are grim times for the crime biz…
But the good news is my friend who had lost her sense of taste and smell reports back: “I had smoked salmon for lunch today. And it tasted fishy!!!!!!
BBC Studios and E4 (part of Channel 4) have ripped-off Benjamin Bankole Bello’s well-established comedy character President Obonjo for their reprehensible non-broadcast comedy chat show pilot which looks remarkably like a wildly offensive piece of racism which could have come straight out of the 1930s or 1950s.
‘President Obonjo’, though, is not a former African strongman for nothing, even if ousted from his ‘Lafta Republic’.
In the last couple of days, a fight-back has been organised and, next Sunday, a (probably 25-minute) President Obonjo show will be recorded for unleashing on the internet. As both BBC Studios and E4 have said in writing that they believe there is room for two former African dictators in the comedy firmament (one original; one their own rip-off) no doubt they will both be rushing to take on President Obonjo. After all, surely no-one could believe there is any two-faced bullshitting going on by either.
Part of the Mama Biashara shop in London’s Shepherd’s Bush
So I talked to comedy critic/judge (Scotsman newspaper, Perrier Awards, Malcolm Hardee Awards) and TV producer (Eurotrash and sundry sport and sex documentaries) Kate Copstick and ‘President Obonjo’ about their plans for next Sunday’s recording in Copstick’s Mama Biasharacharity shop in Shepherd’s Bush, London.
JOHN: So what is it?
COPSTICK: It’s a President Obonjo chat show with interview guests. It’s not a TV pilot. It’s hopefully a mind-boggling world wide viral video.
JOHN: And the basic idea is…?
COPSTICK: The conceit is that the President is not a stupid man and he realises, as I think many of us have, that Britain is falling apart, from the Mother of Parliaments downwards. Never has the time been better for a coup – a power-grab – and President Obonjo has got a bit of previous in this area.
OBONJO: I didn’t get thrown out!… Just over ten years ago. I came on a state visit to Britain to meet your Queen and discovered comedy. My people in Africa found out I was no longer on a state visit, there was a coup détat and I have been here ever since – President Obonjo has been performing comedy for ten years.
JOHN: Who took over in control of the Lafta Republic?
OBONJO: No-one.
JOHN: So it is much like Britain.
OBONJO: Precisely. There is a gap in the leadership in Britain and I am the man to fill it.
JOHN: Parliamentary democracy clearly is not working. We need a strongman.
OBONJO: Change we can believe in. Now is my time.
COPSTICK: Also, this is the 21st century and we could be doing with a black man in charge.
JOHN: Are we allowed to say President Obama was not really black?
OBONJO: He was brown.
JOHN: And only half-Kenyan – his dad. Whereas President Obonjo is all Lafta.
David Lammy made an inspirational speech
OBONJO:David Lammy,when he became a British MP, was so inspirational in his speech about how he never thought he was going to be in Parliament and everyone kept rooting for him to be the first black Prime Minister… That was good, but it has not happened.
COPSTICK: Prime Minister, Shrime Minister. We wanna cut through all that because democracy self-evidently is not working. Boris Johnson has had a very good stab at being a dictator…
OBONJO:… and it has not worked.
JOHN: And, clearly, one-man rule CAN work in Britain because our absolute monarchs succeeded – Henry V took over France. Henry VIII did us proud and took us out of a European religious union. Elizabeth I, though not altogether a man, created an English Empire. It proves that absolute power in the hands of one person works in Britain. Let’s not mention the Germans.
COPSTICK: It absolutely works and President Obonjo has an absolute groundswell of support from the live comedy industry.
JOHN: You can create the Lafta Republic right here in Britain.
OBONJO: Change we can believe in. Yes we can.
COPSTICK: This show which we are recording next Sunday is a chat show, but it is also a show of force with the guests representing large special interest groups within the UK. It will be a tour-de-force.
Colour duplication is fully operational at the BBC in London. (Photograph by Tim Mossholder via Unsplash)
BBC Studios have become embroiled in what they are claiming is the theft both of one of their programmes and of their name by a company calling itself BBC Stewdios.
BBC Stewdios have sold a sitcom pilot idea – Stepson & Co – to E4 (part of Channel 4) about an old-man/young-man rag-and-bone man team. The show is set in the 1990s and bears some similarity to the 1960s-1970s BBC TV father-and-son sitcom Steptoe and Son, which was also about an old-man/young-man rag-and-bone man team.
However, BBC Stewdios claim their sitcom characters were independently developed by producers in their company, none of whom had ever heard of Steptoe & Son and that the setting – the 1990s – clearly distinguishes it from the BBC’s product… Steptoe and Son ran on BBC TV for around ten years.
As for any similarities in the company names, BBC Stewdios have issued a press release saying they came up with their name independently and they had not previously heard of BBC Studios. They say:
“We had obviously heard of the BBC in various contexts – the British Bathroom Company, the Berkshire Boys’ Choir
“Our name came about because our founder John Charles Walsham likes Irish Stew and his Spanish mother used to say it was their family’s God: thus the name Stew-Dios… and ‘BBC’ was decided on because our ideas are Big, Brassy and Creative – thus the name ‘BBC Stewdios’.
“There is a tradition of three-letter names being used by a large range of television companies – ITV, ABC, CBS, NBC – it is the Rule of Three. We believe there is room in broadcasting for two BBCs and we see a clear distinction between BBC Stewdios and BBC Studios, just as there is room in broadcast TV for two rag-and-bone men sitcom series and we see a clear creative distinction between our Stepson & Co sitcom and the BBC’s ten-year run of Steptoe and Son shows, of which we were honestly and innocently totally unaware.
Today’s BBC Stewdios Press Statement
“BBC Studios claim their Steptoe and Son sitcom is widely known and respected, but our producer Ken Bawdell had neither seen nor heard of Steptoe and Son.”
When contacted for comment, Ken Bawdell said: “I don’t take much interest in the broadcast television industry… They’re not nearly as important as they think they are”.
Meanwhile Carl Columbia, Controller of E4, has been quoted as saying: “Channel 4 has a statutory public service remit that it should ‘be innovative and distinctive’. We are satisfied that there has been no infringement of intellectual property by BBC Stewdios in this case and there is plenty of room in the industry for two companies called the BBC.”
A BBC Stewdios spokesperson said: “It is a case of pot-kettle-black. BBC Studios have a long-established reputation for ripping-off ideas. Anyone approached by them should expect and prepare for the worse and neither get their hopes up nor give up their day job. Sadly, it now seems necessary to give the same warning about E4 and Channel 4… #JusticeForObonjo“
With all the misinformation swirling around, it is good to know that the 
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