Here is a really funny sketch from Armstrong and Millar. Anyone who has spent hours on flights for their business or employer will relate to this little sketch. A nice dig at high powered business folk who spend their work hours presenting other colleague's work.

So what I find interesting in these bleak UK political times is how it is spawning new comedy from hitherto completely unknown people (this lady at the time of writing this post has only 393 subscribers). This gem popped up on my Youtube feed on the 13^th of August so I thought I might as well include it in this week's comedy sketch release.

This lady does a great Liz Truss impersonation yet the tragedy is that it is so close to the real thing that one is left feeling both depressed and entertained at the same time. Entertained by the clever parody, yet depressed at the the thought that our next Prime Minister will be indistinguishable from this parody character. Not something you really want to think about when we are facing a cost of living crisis with UK energy bills tipped to hit over £4K per year next year, a war in Eastern Europe, collapsing NHS, global heating-driven European heatwave etc, etc.

I think one of the funniest comedy series made in the teens of the 21^st was the IT crowd. The concept of the series is based around the IT department of a big multinational (Reynholme industries) that produces a product that is never revealed (part of the comical concept of the whole series). The IT department consists of two geeky guys: a classical geek (Moss) and a more subtle geek (Roy) who boasts to his boss Jen in the final episode of the whole series that his girlfriend thinks he is on the "emotional artistic spectrum". In some episodes (including this one) a goth called Richmond, who lives in the Server room, also puts in an appearance just to add to fun.

The series in general was brilliant but like all series, there were some episodes that were particularly funny. This clip is taken from the first episode of season 2 where Moss and Roy gate crash a date with their boss Jen who taken to the theatre by a bloke she hopes will be her next love interest. Unfortunately for her, he is gay and the musical he takes them to is not what one would describe as "mainstream". Yet given this is Moss's very first time at the theatre, he is very impressed, although, unbeknown to him and Roy, things are going to get interesting as the episode unfolds with Roy having to fake he is disabled and Moss ending up working behind the drinks counter and causing utter mayhem. All crazy stuff that generates a ton of very funny comedy. The clip below is the beginning of this very funny episode.

Private Eye Annual is a compilation of funny satirical pieces that were release in Private Eye magazine during the previous year.

So one of my Christmas treats is reading the Private Eye annual which my lovely wife Helen purchases for me every Christmas. As the tag line to my comedy page states, I fully believe now that the comedians role is partly to provide a painkiller for the frustrating banal evil that infects the leadership of many nations. Sadly Britain has been subject to worse forms of this sickness in 2022 so it is soothing to see individuals like Johnson, Farage, Truss, Mogg and Patel subject to the only earthly justice that is available to us for all the problems their poor leadership has caused and that is some humour at their expense.

In a strange way the politicians whose subjugation to wealthy special interest groups and billionaire media moguls, should be thankful for the English tradition of taking the mick because I often wonder if their excellent work has protected these individual from societal anger which in other nations results in sometimes violent insurrection. Perhaps this is the answer to the mystery of why the Brits continue to tolerate a class system that was more at home in the dark ages than in the 21^st century.

In week 23 I posted some material from the series the IT crowd which was a brilliant series that screened in the naughties. Although all the episodes were very funny, two that were exceptionally good were "Are we not men?" (a nice reference to Devo there) and "The work outing". I have already cited the first bit of the work outing in September last year so now it is time for the next instalment. For the context of where this sketch starts, click here to watch part I.

On the day I wrote this post, the UK was in utter political chaos. It is heart breaking the damage the current Conservative government has done to Britain through their corruption, incompetence and greed. Brexit has been the disaster that was predicted yet as with all major mistakes made by those in power, the most affected by their errors are the poor.

Sadly, however this has always been the reality of situation, and the 2007 banking crisis was another great demonstration of how those who cause the most damage to our society, face zero negative consequences while nonetheless being highly rewarded for their mistakes. In many ways, I think this is one of the biggest problems with modern Capitalism. It prides itself on the idea that the free market will be a good arbiter of judging success and failure yet in reality, we often find that those who do offer the most benefit to society are not rewarded even with a liveable wage while those who cause the most damage (and this includes CEOs who destroy individual companies) are almost never held to account. Sadly, those who try to raise this objection are often dismissed as simply being too left-wing when in fact this critique has no bearing on one's view of how socialistic a society should be.

Returning to the comedy at hand, Bird and Fortune were too rather elderly Gentleman who produced a cracking series in the naughties critiquing the obvious political shenanigans that plagued the globe around the time of the financial crisis of 2007/8 and the war on terrorism that preceded it. Sadly John Fortune passed away on New Year's eve of 2013 aged 74 while John Bird passed away only recently on Christmas Eve of 2022 aged 86. RIP John F & John B.

If you're a nervous flyer perhaps best not watch this sketch. Aircraft have definitely been a setting for many comical scenes over the years