Jolyon Rubinstein

Jolyon Rubinstein on taking on conspiricists

Jolyon Rubinstein has made a career out of tackling controversial subjects -- through comedy, satire, and sometimes provocative content. He acted in the Channel 4 comedy Nathan Barley, co-wrote and starred in BBC 3's The Revolution Will Be Televised, a comedy series taking a pop at corruption, created and produced ITV's hip hop panel show Don't Hate The Playaz. And now he is launching the third series of a podcast The New Conspiricist to tackle an internet-fuelled trend that ranges from entertaining escapism to deeply worrying.

The comedy series that finds absurd humour in the UK's reactionary approach to law and order continues, with satirical activists Jolyon Rubinstein and Heydon Prowse - who sharpened their skills on BBC Three's The Revolution Will Be Televised - putting their own spin on knife crime, ticket touts and online trolling.

Ministry of Justice review

Jolyon Rubinstein and Heydon Prowse take the pee out of urine tests and drug crime but fail to nail the hypocrisy.

In the first of a new three-part "hidden camera" show, The Revolution Will Be Televised pranksters Jolyon Rubinstein and Heydon Prowse join forces again to entertain us with sketches in which the Ministry attempts to solve Britain's drug problem by launching its own fake drug-dealing service.

The last in the series of Jolyon Rubinstein and Heydon Prowse's hidden-camera, people-trolling comedy finds them taking to the streets, donning more leaden personas and saying proactively awful things to the general public in order to film their baffled reactions. When they get access to targets actually worth lampooning, such as officials at the Chinese embassy, or MEPs in Strasbourg, the gags fall predictably flat. Farewell to this toothless, sub-Day Today guff.

The hit-and-miss showcase continues via sub-Brass Eye stunts and laboured skits. As per, Jolyon Rubinstein and Heydon Prowse are rebels without a clear cause, darting from undercover nonsense to gratuitous new guises as TV cooks Toby and Toby, who peddle foie gras made by a former Guantánamo prison guard. Full of strangely insipid political takes, although thankfully there is nothing as crass as last week's forced-marriage "parody" on offer.

Ofcom will not investigate 'Real Housewives Of ISIS'

Ofcom has decided not to launch an investigation into the satirical BBC sketch that featured The Real Housewives Of ISIS.

Revolting: Isis sketch courageous, rest is lamentable

It's as if two teams were involved in making the show: Team Bold, and Team Utter Predictable BBC Crap.

Heydon Prowse and Jolyon Rubinstein's trite, derivative prankster satire trundles on. In tonight's instalment, some Scots are unsurprisingly irritated by being called drunken savages. Britain First's Paul Golding is revealed to be a paranoid Islamophobe (hold the front page!). And, in a sketch that has the feel of someone attacking a tank with a spud gun, spoof tabloid hack Dale Maily (take that, Dacre!) pointlessly harasses some BBC employees. Lame.

True enough, Heydon Prowse and Jolyon Rubinstein aren't always funny. However, you can't deny that they fully throw themselves into their satirical interactions (as their pal Grant Shapps might concede). Getting stuck into some city gents and ladies as Labour canvassers has its moments. And their chutzpah as they waltz into a BHS and command staff to sell stock, so Philip Green can have a "truly bedazzling" fourth yacht, is an impressively off-kilter caper.