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Available for over a year

Good morning. Have I Got News For You? begins its 56th series on �鶹�� 1 tonight. It’s been with us since 1990. For a satirical panel show that’s a very long life. The most famous of all satirical TV programmes was That Was The Week That Was back in the 1960s. It changed the political and social weather. But I was surprised to discover recently that it only ran for just over a year. The question now seems to be whether political satire has a future at all. Arnaldo Iannucci, the creator of The Thick Of It, said last week that politics had “moved beyond satire”. He has declared himself redundant in an age in which he said populist politicians seem to regard themselves as entertainers. I’ve found myself saying “you couldn’t make it up” time and again as one unlikely political event has followed another, so I’m sure writing political satire is now very difficult. But I believe it’s still needed. The continuing popularity of Have I Got News For You? is a sign of our desire to laugh at the absurdities of our world. If we do so then we may also laugh at ourselves, something which seems in shorter supply nowadays. To my mind, one of the greatest ever comedy sketches featured John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. Tall, medium height and short, they represented the upper, middle and working class. The script was spare but the final line went to Corbett who, gazing up at his socially superior neighbours, said “I get a pain in the neck”. That sketch did a lot to challenge our attitude to class 50 years ago. It’s lived on because it focussed on disproportion – not just of height but of status. And disproportion is frequently found in the most effective humour. In a famous line from the gospels it was said it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The disproportion is clearly laughable. It’s a joke with a point. Possessions, status, wealth – cling to them too closely and the burden of them will weigh us down. We can’t move on. A friend of mine used to say that people without a sense of humour should not be put in charge of anything. And why? Because they wouldn’t see things in proportion or have a sense of when they were themselves being ridiculous. I think we need Have I Got News For You? as much as ever.