Rik Mayall

'Bottom': Tube Talk Gold

In the mid-1990s, Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson brought us the chaotic, crazy carnage-fest that was Bottom.

For the first time in six years, The Comic Strip, the comedy which was broadcast on Channel 4's opening night, returns with a film noir spoof on former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Stephen Mangan played the PM, who finds himself on the run from Inspector Hutton (Robbie Coltrane), who arrests him for a murder Blair claims he didn't commit. During his attempt to escape the law he pushes an Old Labour tramp off a train (Ross Noble), kills a spookily accurate predictor of the future (Rik Mayall) and ends up in bed with Baroness Thatcher (Jennifer Saunders).

This episode features some great performances, from Mangan as Blair, Saunders as Thatcher, Harry Enfield as an "f-word" fuelled Alistair Campbell (still think Malcolm Tucker is the better, ruder and funnier spin doctor), and Nigel Planer's spooky reincarnation of Peter Mandelson. There were plenty of laughs to be had, especially if you're a film noir fan; for example, Rik Mayall's Professor Predictor is a clear parody of Mr. Memory from Hitchcock's The 39 Steps.

There were also actual moments of tension. My favourite bit in the episode featured Blair in Thatcher's mansion, preparing to change for dinner and being told by the butler Tebbit (John Sessions) not to look in a cupboard. Blair obviously does and out of it pops the rotting skeleton body of Dennis Thatcher.

If I were to have any complaints about this programme, it would be that Tony Blair doesn't seem to be that much of a current satirical subject to mock. Not only is Blair no longer Prime Minister, he wasn't even our last Prime Minister. We've had two different people in the position since he's left. If this was made while Blair was still in power it would have had a much bigger impact.

We see so little of The Comic Strip ensemble these days that it's easy to forget how long they've been in the trenches of British spoof, tossing out a grenade every now and then, as if cursed to spend the rest of their days striving to match the perfection of their hilarious first episode, "Five Go Mad in Dorset", which introduced high jinks to Channel 4's inaugural broadcast in 1982 and the term "lashings of ginger beer" to the cultural memory.

"The Hunt for Tony Blair" - a parodic splicing of noughties politics and 1950s British film noir (though what Herman's Hermits were doing on the soundtrack I don't know) - wasn't uproariously funny but it was handsomely made, with melodramatic shadows and enough money for fog, flat-footed policemen and steam trains. The plot, such as it was - a madcap chase across country, with the PM on the run for murder - threw up knockabout humour and vignettes from Blair's WMD fiasco, featuring a cast of the usual suspects: a languid Nigel Planer as Mandelson; Harry Enfield in East End shout mode as "Alastair"; the excellent Jennifer Saunders as Thatcher in her dotage (and full Barbara Cartland drag), watching footage of her Falklands triumphs from a chaise longue.

Director Peter Richardson, whose comic talents aren't seen enough on screen, played George Bush as a rasping B-movie Italian mobster ("I'm gonna get straight to the crotch of the matter here"). With the exception of impressionist Ronni Ancona (whose 10 seconds as Barbara Windsor seemed puzzlingly extraneous), no one went for a direct impersonation. Stephen Mangan didn't make a bad Blair, though he could have worked on the grin, and he couldn't quite make his mind up between feckless and reckless as he capered from one mishap to the next leaving a trail of bodies. Did Blair's moral insouciance ("Yet another unavoidable death, but, hey, shit happens") call for a look of idiocy or slipperiness?

The comedy had mischief at its heart in mooting that Blair had bumped off his predecessor, John Smith, and accidentally pushed Robin Cook off a Scottish mountain, while Robbie Coltrane's Inspector Hutton (aha!) tacitly invoked the spectre of Dr David Kelly (we never found out who Blair was charged with murdering). But it was hard to squeeze fresh satire from the overfamiliar stodge of the politics ("Tell Gordon to run the country and trust the bankers"). Mangan was at his funniest hiding among sheep in the back of a truck or kicking Ross Noble (playing an old socialist) off a speeding train, though there was amusement elsewhere. I had to laugh at variety theatre act Professor Predictor, shoehorned into the story to enable Rik Mayall in a bald wig and boffin glasses to answer questions from the audience. Would the Beatles still be at No 1 in 50 years' time?

"No. The Beatles will no longer exist. But Paul McCartney will marry a woman with one leg."

How the audience roared. "Pull the other one," someone shouted. Arf, arf.

Biting political satire has never really been The Comic Strip's main selling point.

But films such as a "A Fistful Of Travellers' Cheques" or "Five Go Mad In Dorset", which took the mickey out of spaghetti westerns and Enid Blyton novels, proved that you don't always need a big target to score a cracking comedy bullseye.

Their latest effort - the first for six years - is a peculiar, stylish mishmash that re-imagines the Iraq Inquiry as a black and white film noir. ­Unfortunately, not all of it works, perhaps because their confusing vision of the 1960s contains songs from both The Beatles and Duran Duran.

That said, Stephen Mangan - of Green Wing and Alan Partridge fame - makes a surprisingly plausible stand-in for the former, guitar-strumming Prime Minister who, very much like Corrie's John Stape, becomes an almost accidental serial killer.

As the bodies pile up, he's pursued by a pair of policemen played by Robbie Coltrane and The ­Inbetweeners' James Buckley, all the while ­maintaining an air of innocence.

There's no appearances from ­stalwarts such as Dawn French or Adrian Edmondson this time around, but Jennifer Saunders pops in with another take on Margaret Thatcher.

We also have Rik Mayall playing a music-hall psychic who makes uncanny predictions about weapons of mass destruction, Peter Richardson, who also directs, pops up as George Bush in gangster mode, and Nigel Planer simply IS Peter Mandelson.

The joke seems to be not how much the actors look like the people they're supposed to be playing, rather how much they don't.

You'd never guess in a million years that John Sessions is supposed to be Norman Tebbit, for instance.

Good to see some of The Comic Strip gang (Jennifer Saunders, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer) return after a six-year break. They're joined by Stephen Mangan and Inbetweener James Buckley for a cunningly conceived film noir romp featuring Tony Blair as a murderer on the run. Mangan is well-cast as Blair, constantly trying to justify his actions (he's an innocent man, really), while Buckley teams up with Robbie Coltrane's Inspector Hutton in a bid to chase him down.

The Comic Strip have been away too long (six years), and while they've been gone young pretenders (like Star Stories) have moved in on their patch. But for anyone who grew up with their early films, there's a thrill in seeing comedy heroes like Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer and Jennifer Saunders back in the same cast, even if they're barely sharing screen time.

Instead, they all share scenes with Stephen Mangan, who proves perfect casting as Tony Blair in a loose plot - a string of film noir pastiches, basically - about the police (in the form of Robbie Coltrane) pursuing him for various murders. The running gag is that Blair keeps killing people and justifying it to himself as, though regrettable, the right decision at the time.

It's sketchy, in both senses, but Mangan holds it together, channelling Blair as a guitar-strumming twit. Saunders does a great Sunset Boulevard Margaret Thatcher and amazingly, Planer's Peter Mandelson is spot on.

Purveyors of elegant pastiche for almost 30 years, The Comic Strip - aka writer/director Peter Richardson - mixed recent political history with British post-war thriller to produce The Hunt For Tony Blair.

Loosely based upon The Thirty Nine Steps, with a multitude of other film references thrown in for good measure, it told of how the former Labour prime minister became a fugitive from the law following the invasion of Iraq, WMD fiasco and attempted assassination of a stage memory man.
Atmospherically enhanced by the stark black and white photography, The Hunt For Tony Blair was characteristically well crafted, continually clever, crammed with comic details and energetically paced. Over an hour's duration the conceit was stretched pretty thin, subtlety frequently went as AWOL as Blair, and there was a noticeable absence of belly laughs, but The Comic Strip once again proved its pedigree as one of British TV comedy's truly class acts.

Stephen Mangan, managing a very creditable vocal impersonation, starred as a bright eyed, bushy tailed and cheerfully amoral Blair, who also provided a suitably disingenuous narration. No Alexei Sayle, alas, but the rest of The Comic Strip repertory company were present and correct in a variety of supporting roles. Even swathed beneath layers of costume and make up, Rik Mayall was instantly recognizable by his shameless overacting, but it was Nigel Planer who stole the show as an oleaginous Peter Mandelson or, as investigating officer DI Hutton (Robbie Coltrane) preferred to call him, "Squealer".

The only false note was when the story quite literally went off the beaten track to visit Margaret Thatcher's country retreat, shared with obsequious butler Tebbitt and a skeleton in the closet that turned out to be Denis. Jennifer Saunders played Thatcher, having already played Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher in The Comic Strip's Strike. In a perverse and curious case of life imitating art, the real Meryl Streep is soon to be seen as Thatcher in a feature film called The Iron Lady.

Nearly 30 years after their debut, the famous alternative comic troupe returns to Channel 4. Here, new boy Stephen Mangan plays Tony Blair as a film noir-style fugitive from justice, on the run after he's been accused of murder, in a piece that's like Hitchcock's 39 Steps crossed with Kind Hearts and Coronets-style black humour. Alongside him are the old regulars from The Comic Strip's previous films: Nigel Planer as Peter Mandelson, Robbie Coltrane as the detective on Blair's case, with appearances by Harry Enfield and Rik Mayall. Jennifer Saunders almost steals the show by playing Margaret Thatcher as a sexually predatory version of Miss Havisham. At the edge of acceptable taste - is it too early to make humour out of the death of Robin Cook? - "The Hunt for Tony Blair" puts a smile on your face even if there are not many laugh-out-loud moments. This is largely thanks to Mangan's turn as a smooth killer always ready with a voice-over justification about the "tough choices" he has to make, even when murdering an Old Labour homeless man. But despite its satirical digs at our old PM, Mangan's charming performance serves as a reminder of how likeable Blair once was.

So as The Comic Strip has been revived, it makes a certain sense that the result is a decade-mashing melange which tells a warped version of Tony Blair's PM years, taking place in an anachronistic Britain which looks like the 1950s, ripping off The 39 Steps, Sunset Boulevard, The Godfather and, understandably, The Comic Strip themselves. Or rather, Peter Richardson, for though never reaching the same heights as his former colleagues, the director pretty much was The Comic Strip. He's brought back some of the old crew, including Rik Mayall, Robbie Coltrane, Nigel Planer and John Sessions.

For some, the intentionally over the top nonsense of Blair going on the run from 'Inspector Hutton of Scotland Yard' after faking evidence for the Iraq War - complete with lines like "It felt like the whole world was against me, apart from Barbara Windsor of course" - will not be enough to excuse the spoof from its nastier accusations: Blair's shown murdering John Smith and Robin Cook, while Thatcher (played by Jennifer Saunders, naturally) is a monstrous Norma Desmond luring him to bed.

Yes, this isn't exactly sophisticated satire, but it is surprisingly funny in places, with Stephen Mangan capturing Blair's wide-eyed insouciance. While it references the 50s visually, it actually evokes nostalgia for the 80s, when having a childish pop at the people in power felt dangerous - like it could genuinely change things. And the darkest comic line is a real one: "Hey, in the end, only God and history can judge me," says Tony.