Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher, hero of British comedy

Thatcher inspired the 'alternative comedy' movement in the 80s through rage at her policies. So why isn't this happening now?

Katy Brand: Margaret Thatcher launched my comedy career

Katy Brand recalls how Margaret Thatcher was her first impression aged six and was also the first time she'd tried to make an adult laugh (even getting paid for it).

Gerald Scarfe on how he loved to loathe Thatcher

Satirical cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, famed for his often grotesque depictions of the late Margaret Thatcher, recalls lampooning her on a weekly basis during her heyday, and also that - despite loathing her politics - he misses her.

Russell Brand on Margaret Thatcher

The actor and comedian recalls a bizarre recent encounter with the Iron Lady, and how it prompted him to think about growing up under the most unlikely matriarch-figure imaginable.

Yes, Prime Minister's Jonathan Lynn remembers Thatcher

When writer-director Jonathan Lynn co-created Yes, Minister his intent was to parody and mock the politicians who ran the government. What he did not expect was that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister herself, would come out as one of the latter show's biggest fans.

Hosted by Rory Bremner, Mike Yarwood: So This Is Him! profiles the first great impressionist, Mike Yarwood.

Yarwood was somewhat before my time, so this documentary was one of those chances to appreciate a comedian whose shows are never repeated. Of course, there is a reason why impressionism and satire isn't repeated that often...

My own knowledge of Yarwood before this programme was limited to knowing a handful of people he mimicked - Harold Wilson and Eddie Waring - and knowing that he fell into decline because he couldn't impersonate Margaret Thatcher. But there was so much that surprised me, including the fact that Yarwood invented the phrase "I mean that most sincerely, folks." It's associated with Hughie Green, but Green himself never used.

In the documentary for Radio 2, Bremner claims that one of Yarwood's great achievements was to humanise politicians. He wasn't as vicious and cutting as the later satirists on shows like Spitting Image, which probably didn't help him in his later career.

While Yarwood suffered due to changes in how people like to receive their laughs, there's no doubt he was a great comic. If only they repeated his stuff more often - and indeed Spitting Image for that matter...

Margaret Thatcher: Comedy's greatest straight man

Thatcher was every stand-up's dream, as a new show that revisits her contribution to comedy reveals.

The last time I saw Griff Rhys Jones on television was during the Jubilee pageant, when he was meandering up the Thames in a motor launch. I thought he looked miserable then, but that was nothing compared to how fed up he appeared presenting the first episode of the comedy panel quiz show, A Short History of Everything Else (Channel 4). Griff's script opened with: "We're off down memory lane without a seat belt ... because we didn't have to wear them in those days" and went downhill thereafter. His rictus smile throughout was almost certainly pain, though it would be more charitable to put it down to professionalism.

It wasn't just the script that was desperate: it was the concept as well. It was as though someone in the commissioning department had watched a couple of episodes of Have I Got News For You on Dave and come up with the brainwave of dispensing with topicality and making a news show that would feel like a repeat the first time you watched it. From round to round, the format never changed; Griff would make some crap gags to introduce a sequence of archive footage before inviting the two team captains - Marcus Brigstocke and Charlie Baker - along with guests Micky Flanagan and Kirsty Wark to make their own crap gags. I guess it was cheap, but it wasn't funny.

Brigstocke looked for a moment as if he thought he had actually wandered on to the set of a HIGNFY repeat as he gave a passable imitation of an extremely grumpy Paul Merton, looking permanently pissed off and not laughing at anyone else's jokes. But, on reflection, he was probably just annoyed he too had let himself be talked into signing up for such a turkey.

Satire just doesn't work on 30 year-old archive footage. Margaret Thatcher gags stopped having any edge the moment Ben Elton started making them in the 1980s. As for the old clips of Elton John having a tantrum and the 70s beer adverts ... For what it's worth, Charlie and Kirsty won by 15 points to 14. The result might seem rather more relevant in five years though, after the show has been repeated a few times.

Saunders to play "sexual Margaret Thatcher" in sitcom

New comedy Dead Boss casts the Ab Fab star as an unhinged prison governor.

Janet Brown obituary

The actress and comedian Janet Brown was best known for her impersonations of Margaret Thatcher during the 1970s and '80s.