David Cameron (I)
Press clippings Page 2
Radio Times review
When this show first aired ten years ago - back when Twitter didn't exist, David Cameron was Shadow Education Secretary and Andy Murray was outside the world's top 400 - it didn't look like much. Yet another panel show, and an unprepossessing mix of Have I Got News for You and Whose Line Is It Anyway? to boot - surely it wouldn't go on to be one of TV comedy's most reliable ratings bankers?
Well, it did - and now it's back for a triumphant 14th series, with Dara O Briain still in charge and a roster of strong comics, old and new: Katherine Ryan, James Acaster, Matt Forde and Josh Widdicombe join hoary regulars Hugh Dennis and Andy Parsons.
Jack Seale, Radio Times, 11th June 2015It's the week after the week after the election: potentially a news dead zone. How will this perky puppet-based satire cope, with its excellent Miliband and Clegg impersonations presumably now mothballed? David Cameron's promised first 100 days of pain should already be taking shape, although that would mean material more darkly political than the personal lampoons this show thrives on. Perhaps he'll be selfconsciously fluffing his tiny majority. If not, Newzoids always has its ace songs to fall back on. Last in the series.
Jack Seale, The Guardian, 20th May 2015Who says satire is dead? After this, I would imagine just about everybody.
According to Jon Culshaw, one of the prime movers in ITV's new puppet-CGI farrago Newzoids
Where did it all go wrong? Of course, Spitting Image profited hugely from being the product of the Thatcher era, when the political battle lines were starkly drawn and the whiff of anarchy and grapeshot was in the air. Now we've entered an insipid (yet disturbing) era in which politicians posture, bluster and say anything that might nudge the all-powerful opinion polls half a percentage point in their direction. Conviction is dead, and everybody has fired off their personal opinions all over Twitter before the Newzoid scriptwriters have managed to pull the caps off their biros. And besides, doesn't the EU make all the big decisions for us anyway?
Take out the ads and Newzoids only last about 23 minutes, but even so it could hardly drag itself to the finishing tape. The team had laboured hard to draw up a checklist of likely targets, but then couldn't think of anything satirical to say about them. Ed Miliband appeared as a gormless geek with Ant and Dec (or perhaps it was vice versa). A barely-recognisable David Cameron was carried around like Nero in a sedan chair, talking like Ken Clarke impersonating the Duke of Kent. And why have him saying "get me to a hospital, a private one obvs" when his use of the NHS is well documented?
There was a sketch called "Mrs Crown's Boys", in which the Queen and Prince Philip kept saying "feck", and we had a pantomimic Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond singing "sod the English". It looked as if there might be a daring moment coming up when we saw a Muslim couple worrying about their son joining Isis, but it stopped before anything controversial happened. Nigel Farage was depicted as a stand-up comic with a fag and a pint of beer. Then Gary Barlow sang a song about not paying tax. It was like Anti-Pointless, where you had to find the laziest, most obvious answers that everyone else had already thought of.
Three Lions: footy farce at St James Theatre
If these walls could talk. Specifically, the walls of the Swiss hotel room in which David Beckham, David Cameron and Prince William holed up for 48 hours in December 2010, as they finalised England's bid to FIFA to host the 2018 World Cup.
James Fitzgerald, Londonist, 30th March 2015David Cameron sung Benny Hill song in debate ad break
Tasked with keeping the audience entertained during an advert break, Sky News host Kay Burley asked Cameron could sing. The Prime Minister said no -- but revealed he does sing "Ernie" in the shower, a comic ditty about a milkman by legendary British comedian Benny Hill.
Rob Price, Business Insider UK, 27th March 2015As a younger show with an "open door" submissions policy - meaning that anyone can send in material for consideration - the topical sketch series Newsjack (Radio 4 Extra, Thursday) ought to be edgier, weirder, less formulaic than The News Quiz; but ends up, somehow, being just as complacent. Currently fronted by the comedian Nish Kumar, with assistance from a revolving cast of comics and actors, it's one of a small group of original, non-archival series on 4 Extra.
This week's half-hour instalment was dispiriting in the way that only really unfunny comedy can be. A skit about a plane that had been forced to land at Heathrow because of a broken lavatory careered out of the radio and landed with a tin clunk on the floor. The nadir was reached during a skit about politicians doing drugs, in which Nicola Sturgeon was represented by someone doing a generic Scottish accent, David Cameron by someone who sounded vaguely like Ed Miliband, Ed Miliband by someone who sounded like a young Janet Street-Porter, and Nigel Farage by a woman making no attempt to do an accent at all.
Why does BBC radio so consistently fudge this kind of thing? Neither series is doing anything that pushes a boundary, finds an edge, or ventures anywhere outside of an ideological comfort zone. Chris Morris's On the Hour, commissioned by Radio 4 nearly 25 years ago, retains more bite in a single sketch than they managed across an hour of broadcast time. Here's hoping it doesn't take another quarter-century for the BBC to try something different.
Pete Naughton, The Telegraph, 25th March 2015Interview: Cassetteboy
f you have a broadband connection you will have surely already seen this clip in which David Cameron's speeches are exquisitely edited to fit into the melody of Eminem's Lose Yourself. Last night it had had a million YouTube hits. I woke up this morning and the number had almost doubled. Cassetteboy - two publicity-shy comedians who want to hide their faces - have totally gone overground with this sample of spot-on satire. Beyond The Joke asked for an interview and while they were not prepared to meet face-to-face, half of the team, "Mike", did answer some questions via email.
Bruce Dessau, Beyond The Joke, 3rd October 2014Spitting Image creators: Cameron & Miliband are too similar
David Cameron and Ed Miliband are too "alike" to inspire the type of satire that made Spitting Image famous, according to Steve Nallon, who impersonated the voice of Margaret Thatcher on the show.
Edward Malnick, The Telegraph, 25th February 2014Al Murray and David Cameron are distant cousins
Al Murray is related to David Cameron, according to newly released family records. The comedian and British prime minister are distant cousins through 19th century novelist and Vanity Fair writer William Thackeray.
Jamie Harris, Digital Spy, 29th January 2014Was David Cameron behind honour for Ruth Jones?
Was the MBE for Ruth Jones, the star and co-creator of Gavin & Stacey, David Cameron's way of encouraging her to write a new series?
Tim Walker, The Telegraph, 1st January 2014