Tony Blair

Charlie Baker to play Tony Blair in Harry Hill musical

Comedian and singer Charlie Baker is to play Tony Blair in Harry Hill's latest musical Tony! A Tony Blair Rock Opera.

Matt Forde to interview Tony Blair

Matt Forde will be joined by former PM Tony Blair for a one off Political Party Brexit special.

The Last Leg: Re-United Kingdom review

The message running through the evening was that, following the example of Jo Cox, we should seek to set aside our differences and remember what we have in common.

Preview - The Last Leg: Re-United Kingdom

Inspired by the courageous MP, Jo Cox, tonight's extended episode of The Last Leg, is dedicated to all her hard work and beliefs.

Tony Blair refused to ban Borat, says Sacha Baron Cohen

The comedian says the Kaskakhstani PM wanted to stop the 2006 film being released - and the row turned into an international incident, hitting trade.

The Comic Strip Presents... Red Top, saw some of the brand's original cast members including Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson appear beside some new recruits. These new recruits included Maxine Peake who took the lead as disgraced News International boss Rebekah Brooks in this retelling of the phone-hacking scandal that was written like it was set in the 1970s despite its many modern references. Peake provided the narration from Rebekah's own point-of-view painting herself as a naive Northern girl even though all of her co-workers thought differently. The action played out over 75 minutes and shot at many targets including The Guardian, David Cameron's attempts to become prime minister as well as the whole phone hacking scandal itself. But despite its satirical edge, I found that Red Top was quite scattershot in its approach and the script never really hung together that well. There were some elements of the programme I liked namely Russell Tovey's turn as Andy Coulson and his relationship with a stereotypical Sun journalist played by Johnny Vegas. Vegas' kind hearted reporter was eventually revealed to be the man who exposed the whole hacking scandal and the references to the Watergate Scandal were actually quite amusing. Even though it didn't really fit into anything else in the piece, I also quite liked the fact Red Top's portrayal of Tony Blair as a new-wave hippy who'd reinvented himself as a musical God. In a lovely bit of continuity Blair was played by Stephen Mangan who'd previously portrayed the former PM in The Comic Strip's last outing. However I do feel that the negatives outweighed the positives as I found a lot of the gags a bit obvious for example Wendi Deng's drugging of Rupert Murdoch in order for her to have control of his empire. Additionally I didn't feel some of the famous faces necessarily needed to be part of the story and this was particularly true in regards to Harry Enfield's Ross Kemp whose participation in the piece was minimal at best. But my main issue with Red Top was that the central joke about Rebekah Brooks' innocent outlook on events wore thin by about the halfway point. This is a shame as I believe that Peake did a good job with what she was given but I do feel that the material let her down to an extent. Overall I think that Red Top had some interesting elements but will ultimately go down as a rather forgettable entry into The Comic Strip collection.

News International gets a thorough skewering in this new instalment of the veteran satire series Comic Strip. The peerless Maxine Peake stars as flame-haired red top editor Rebekah Brooks, an "innocent and beguiling northern girl" who rises to the top of the tabloid publishing empire alongside Russell Tovey's Andy Coulson. As ever, it's a star-studded affair, with Stephen Mangan as a 70s Tony Blair and Harry Enfield as Ross Kemp, alongside top turns from Johnny Vegas, Nigel Planer and Alexei Sayle.

Radio Times review

This will be the 42nd instalment of The Comic Strip Presents pageant to be aired over the best part of 35 years, and it promises to be the kind of shamelessly silly, flight-of-fancy spoof that has become something of a national institution in the other 41.

The target for their satirical boot this time is the phone-hacking scandal, but transposed to the disco-era 1970s. Rebekah Brooks (Maxine Peake) is here a naive northern girl who more or less accidentally becomes chief executive of News International and roller-skates (literally) through life unaware of the dreadful things going on around her.

One of the only survivors of the troupe that first launched Channel 4 on air in 1982 is Nigel Planer, here playing a hen-pecked Rupert Murdoch, while Stephen Mangan reprises his Tony Blair turn (as a groovy rocker) and Harry Enfield dons the bald cap to embody Brooks's sometime husband, Ross Kemp.