Originally published at: The origins of Yes, Prime Minister's classic joke about UK newspaper readers | Boing Boing
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The underlying joke is so solid and evergreen* that it highlights the skill in delivery. Eddington nailed it, Frost not so much.
[* the British press is truly and eternally horrible]
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At 4:42 if you don’t want to slog through the rest of it.
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Curses. I really liked the idea of making everyone endure an indeterminate but potentially 21m journey into David Frost’s joyless mumble only to see him fuck up the same joke you’d just seen Eddington, Hawthorne and Fowlds nail.
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This was probably pretty trenchant up to the time, when the world had only just entered its neoliberal death spiral, but it’s a bit outdated now.
The Times is now read (and owned) by spivs who took this exact joke too seriously. The Guardian is read by people who enjoy saying how the country shouldn’t be run, but actively oppose it being run by themselves. That which reads the Daily Mail is not people at all. And most importantly, outside of the media-political class and its Renfields, no one reads any of it.
(bearing in mind that headline-sharing is not reading)
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Even in Canada, The Sun has (had?) a hottie in page 2 or 3. They all wanted to start a modeling career or a dance studio. My take of the readership was knuckle-draggers with grease on their hands, cat-calling POS types. I can’t wrap my brain around how the serious news of the day and boobies go together.
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The S*n told it’s readers what to think, using the page three girls to push the editorial points of the day.
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This play is a really good exploration of the story.
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"Sandy, 18 (34, 22, 36), says, “Vote Brexit to take back control from Johnny Foreigner.”
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I only wish someone had cleaned up the audio a bit.
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This was published earlier this year. I would have sworn I read the whole thing, delightedly, at least two years ago.
I feel messed up
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That’s pretty much it, except if you actually met Sandy in real life she could give you a well thought out explanation of why the S*n is wrong, but she needed the job to pay her tuition fees if she wants to finish her economics degree.
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Ms Skanky and I recently finished another of our occasional Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister marathons. Still holds up, still great stuff. The ensemble work is MWAAAH!, but Nigel Hawthorne is just extraordinary.
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To clarify, that is not the Vancouver Sun. The Sun as I know it is a semi-respectable paper/site.
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“mouth of a Conservative Prime Minister” - Jim Hacker’s party affiliation was never stated.
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Unless your in Liverpool, where you will be unlucky to find some where that sells it, as its banned, they have lost 800,000 sales a day since the paper was banned in Merseyside, so many its of no loss to shops when people ask them to stop selling it all together…
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I recommend listening to Tim Minchin’s “Confessions”.
They paid the sunshine girls? I thought it was “exposure” of all kinds.
One of the joys of moving to Liverpool is that you come across taxis wrapped in Total Eclipse of the S*n liveries, and anti-Sun stickers placed unselfconsciously on the entrance to random pubs (by the owner). And you can’t buy it nearly anywhere, including in local supermarkets.
Scousers really hate what the Sun did after Hillsborough. And don’t forget.
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