The Daily Mash: sixteen years of taking the piss

Tom Whiteley is the editor of satirical news publication The Daily Mash. As their new book is published, he discusses the ethos of the website and how class is at the roots of so much great British comedy.

In the 1960s, there was a stand-up called Mort Sahl.

An inspiration to everyone from Lenny Bruce to Richard Pryor, Sahl had no slick routine. Instead he had a newspaper.

He'd walk onto stage, sit on a spotlit stool, and begin flicking through it. When a story caught his eye he'd read a little aloud, joke about it, extend the joke, turn it into a whole satirical attack, move on, read another. He was renowned for his righteous anger and willingness to assault the great and good.

Mort Sahl is the only decent analogy I've found for writing and editing The Daily Mash.

We're not stand-up comedians who try new material on selected audiences until, five minutes at a time, they put together a routine that kills. We're not writers for TV whose drafts go through revision after revision before being filmed. We're not even the late Mock The Week, with the luxury of filming 90 minutes and cutting two-thirds of it.

Instead, every weekday morning, we're starting with nothing but a newspaper and a sensibility, hoping to make you laugh.

I say 'we'. I'm the editor-in-chief and I've been with the Mash for 12 of its 16 years, working my way up from freelance writer. There's an editorial team of four and a writing staff of around 20.

Founded in 2008 by Neil Rafferty and Paul Stokes, a pair of journalists working in Scotland who had been made redundant, The Daily Mash got one staple of comedy just right: timing.

It hit just as Facebook was taking off and that's where you first saw it: a funny, scabrous presence on your timeline. Written like a newspaper covering the weirdest stories with the straightest face, The Daily Mash rode the social media wave.

Along the way it became professional, picking up an editor and a staff, publishing annuals, making The Mash Report and Late Night Mash and getting tens of millions of views.

Writers who once contributed to the Mash have gone on to write novels, children's books, movies, television. Kat Sadler, once of our parish, won a Bafta for Such Brave Girls last year.

Meanwhile, while all that's gone on, the Mash continues. Still satirising, seven prime ministers later. We were there, taking the piss, when the iPhone was first introduced and now we're mainly viewed on them.

A comedy institution for a generation - 16 years is a generation, right? - we're still operating under the same rules. Topical comedy, with jokes that hit today and are barely comprehensible in five years when their subjects are forgotten, alongside observational stuff that ages far better.

That's the basis of Class Wars - our new book with publishers Michael O'Mara, out now - which is more than 70 per cent new material all focused on the idiosyncrasies of that endless source of mirth, the British class system.

It was a natural subject for a book, because class is at the roots of so much great British comedy. Half the sitcoms we've ever made are about the tiny differences that set us apart and bring us together.

We've written thousands of stories about class over the years, and we'll write thousands more. It's an inexhaustible source of comedy for those from these isles, whether you're mocking the foibles of those above and below or laughing at yourself.

Other than that? You'll find us, every weekday, out there under the spotlight, flipping through the newspaper.

Like Mort Sahl, except he married a Bond girl then alienated audiences by obsessing over the Warren Commission report into JFK's assassination. But the analogy tracks until then.

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The Daily Mash: Class Wars, published by Michael O'Mara, is in all good bookshops. You can order a copy from Amazon