Making a Mockery of Democracy - Al Murray

good evening hello um first thing first don't panic I'm not going to I'm not in character the people say at the front you are entirely safe nothing's gone out what's your name Lou great brilliant now so not no that's going to happen what I want to do tonight is tell you about my adventure last year into the world of politics I'd like to be able to say that it was inspired by something had to be in when I was here at hall between 1987 and 1990 but it wasn't I'd like to be able to say with certainty that the food's better than it was in the late 80s but I just can't remember but I got into comedy because on my first day here at City Hall I went down to the music room which used to be the bottom staircase tape and to put my drum kit in there and Stuart Lee and Richard Herring were in there planning a show that they'd just throw in Edinburgh that they were bringing bringing back to Oxford they've been in Edinburgh and no one had gone to see them but that didn't matter because comedy is all about assertion and there's 9/10 the law is saying you're funny and saying you're successful and then that gets you over that gets you through over a lot of hurdles that can come up with doing comedy so the reason I got into what I do is because I came here I was very very fortunate to land at the right place in the right time with the right people and be surrounded by people who made it look possible so in that respect none of this of what you're about to hear about would happened if I hadn't come to this College so lucky me now this is a talk called making a mockery of democracy now this time last year the nation as we all remember reeled from the unexpected result of the general election had offered the electorate contrary to all opinion polling I in my guys is the pub landlord representing the free United Kingdom party or fu KP for short up yeah it worked on that level as well I managed to secure 318 votes in the critical ballot battle Souths panic the tiniest of acorn certainly but like any tiny acorn a potentially mighty oak I accept the 318 votes isn't very many but it's 18 more people than the spartans had when they save civilization at Thermopylae oh yeah so David Cameron conservative it defied the odds the pollsters confident predictions as well as the commentary Oates outpourings and had taken his party from a coalition to a working majority in a surprise win that still has those three factions scratching their heads but the main event that the world was watching was in fanuc south as we kept calling it even though it called south Thanet it just sounds better than it sounds more political I was relieved when the result was called the process ended indeed I felt that runner-up nigel Faraj you kept losing losers speech an expression of relief and regret free delight that the campaign was finally over have pretty much captured my mood the campaign had been hard work and it was surprising in what it threw up a lot of what it threw up was about as welcome as a cup of cold sick but like a cup of cold sick revealing maps of some people's diets so why did I do it let's get the Y out the way after all why would a comedian get involved in politics beyond making snarky jokes about the Tories comedians are mainly arrogant mercenary bastards delicately sensitive to the stability of their Apple carts I can only really speak myself but I think that holds true I'm not the first comedian to have run for Parliament and I doubt I'll be the last in Iceland and Denmark they've even been elected Pepe griot in Italy leads a big dumb populist scary fickle reactive movement in this country I'm no pioneer there's precedent the monster raving Louise and the like but what is the setup to the punchline of appearing beside Nigel Faraj you Kip as he crapped out on his fifth yes his fifth attempt to get into Parliament is the I ran for Parliament for one reason really well to actually make that three the first was simple enough though it's framed by the other two two years ago a far more famous comedian and I embarked on a personal journey into selling books sorry had a political awakening a political awaiting that was take a remarkably serious by serious people in a way that's best described as remarkable so it was that the Sun newspapers shagger of the year and star of films such as hop and Despicable Me 1 & 2 Russell Brand whilst punting his book revolution a screened of huge popularity influence at least that's what I've heard suggested that there was no point in voting his argument ran bus voting delivers bad political outcomes so you might as well not vote the problem is it doesn't really take into account how not voting delivers bad political outcomes and ones for which you have arguably abdicated all responsibility but as he was asking people to man the barricades not to have a bit of a think fair enough so with an election coming I figured as they're far less famous comedian is in neither of the despicable Me films nor hop and definitely not shagged of the you despite my best efforts that I should do something that involved voting something that wasn't simply saying hey kids vote which is in name and certainly not hey kids vote X because my attitude has always been to leave people to make up their own minds after all when you leave it to people to figure things out for themselves you're actually paying them a compliment though as you'll see as we go through this it's not always as straightforward as you might hope secondly I've become entry increasingly beguiled and fascinate in the last couple of years by how people politicians as well as people who regard themselves as politically engaged go about doing politics and so decided the pub landlord should have a go at it to something I've done in the last seven or eight years of live work with the act is made him aware of his fame he regards audiences as fellow travelers or willing converts to some sort of common sense revolution it's a great opportunity to talk bollocks basically in the same timeframe social media has emerged as an intriguing new platform for discussion social media is an open invitation to study the you name the tribal the reactive and the reflexive in such a deliciously immediate way on any subject and politics is no exception folks seem very eager to deliver up the ill-considered hot from their hair brains without so much as a second thought it's endless sport and it's also not unlike how the public things now I have no real-life type of tribalism my instinct is a comic is that I should have no tribe or else it's very hard to say a plague on all their houses so a general election offers a perfect opportunity to engage with this stuff to use it as source material to turn it into something hopefully something funny to try to make a silk purse out of a dog's dinner if you will so besides the show I've been touring in 2014-2015 contain this line about you kick who'd have thought that this country I'll do the voice unit for this country the mother of all Parliament's some bloke waving around a pint offering common-sense solutions would be seen as a viable option so I was giving myself clues as to what to do about the upcoming election and finally most importantly I thought would be funny really really funny my manager thought it'd be funny to my friends thought it'd be funny in fact it was an old friend who said well come on you're going to run aren't you and I said where and he said well fam it's south of course then I came up for the name of the party there and then in the Eagle in Cambridge where Crick and Watson celebrated their discovery of DNA just saying now in other words comedian runs as joke candidate the Occam's razor explanation for why I ran for Parliament now I never revealed any of these reasons at the time because to my mind it was far more interesting not to and because these things are blindingly obvious that you couldn't work them out for yourself then that's not really my problem so New Year of 2015 we'd filled in the forms to create the free United Kingdom party Chris the head of marketing was secretary Trish our IT guy was treasurer and I was leader and she says leader on the forum it's brilliant we made the decision to limit the membership to the three of us because actually having a proper membership was likely to become a huge administrative and accounting nightmare besides who would want to join we decided to run as a party because it gave us more satirical pegs to hang things up the rise of you clip has been a fascinating thing an essentially single issue protest movement that's tried and failed several times to mutate into a proper political party along the way it's had several other causes gravitate towards it not only like you keep we made stuff as we went along had no proper infrastructure a single charismatic leader as me and capable of coherent argument that was me and a fondness for making wild promises me again and we're up against big party machinery however the fact that involved in our campaign were extremely experienced promotional marketing and PR people not used to operating the standard political environment unexpectedly gave us some advantages we didn't think the way they do so we weren't constrained by their conventions for instance it occurred to none of the main political parties even with a general election definitely happening in May thanks to the five-year Parliament act to book any of the advertising bills but billboard space in South fanuc there look no one had bothered booking any of it it's completely ridiculous and that costs a lot less than you think we had a couple of lucky breaks to run for Parliament you need an address in the constituency or one of its neighbouring constituencies after I'd announced we were running my phone rang was my old drama teacher Mike the man largely responsible for getting me into acting many years ago he said look I've retired to Kent do you want to use my address for the campaign jackpot straight in the other requirement is you need 10 signatories from the constituency to back up your candidacy if you're an established party that's simple enough you get 10 members to sign up if you're a showbiz interloper like me seeking to take the piss you do a shout out on your facebook page and 10 people appear straightaway all present are correct aside from mister Faraj you kept running in fan itself South panic with the main parties will Scobie for Labour a local councillor whose family is steeped in Kent politics Craig McKinley for the Conservatives whose Faraj his old accountant and a you Kipp defector so there was a bad blood in the constituency as well as a Lib Dem poor thing save Manson Airport and the local Jokers from the route reality party and some people called the nation of the zebediah of ugh who want separation for the Isle of Thanet they are a bit pissed off another joke candidate turned out to be honest to me in truth none of these candidates ever really troubled as much Faraj started by saying with good humor that alas there was some decent opposition of the constituency the more the merrier and then gradually slithered into saying mean things like we were going to the same prom and I'd been looking at his date he eventually ended up calling for the Electoral Commission to be closed down yep Nigel Faraj calls for electoral commission to be closed down after fu KP decision this isn't a spectator mr. stare Pike is the name of the diarist mr. stare Pike's disclosure the electoral commission of approved Almira is freedom you not that's wrong free no that's the press for you free United Kingdom party as an official party of the election has not gone down well with Nigel Faraj the leader UKIP's as the decision is disgraced and fu KP are a joke party we were a joke party spare speaking at the UKIP's Southwest Conference for hours called for everyone in the Commission to lose their job as a result of the decision if you add that to the scandal of postal voting fraud I want everyone in the electro Commission fired and the organisation closed down now I'd suggest that Nigel for us knew that such a thing could never happen but imagine he was surrounded by people nudging him in the ribs saying come on you need to say something often I think politicians ask for things they know they can't have and for the perfectly good reason it'll satisfy therefore shut up their own side similarly our logo which you see there is an upside-down pound sign reversed it becomes an f' sort of sort of our logo which used the pound sign turn upside down to make an F enraged some UKIP's supporters who felt that the pound sign used in their party artwork belong to them this assertion delights me in its ambition they didn't run the country yet and they claimed the national currency as their own this complaint round hand-in-hand with the notion that their own supporters might be confused by our artwork and vote for me by accident even though they're nationally famous Dear Leader was on the same ticket as be our parties were called something different and well did they really think they would voters were that thick as it was the Electoral Commission had no problem with any of this stuff so I'm not calling for them to be shut down so initial reaction we launched them well what can I say initial reactions were strong some rudimentary polling throughout these results there we go who should get your vote in south panic that's me and you need I mean you need 41% to win a general election in this country that's 50 51 52 % that's pretty good that's pretty good further polling who would make the best Prime Minister second only to David Cameron there we go that's me to top blue there remember Nick Clegg no no one does right it's not static isn't it seeing his name he was like a broken mug wasn't it you couldn't get the handle back on now so much for the competition our strategy was as they say two-pronged the inevitable social media president's YouTube videos live tweeting of things like the leaders debate I'm not manifesto stuff like that here's one of the videos this is a party political broadcast on behalf of the free United Kingdom party greetings friends in common sense since I made my historic announcement and reset the UK's political clock there has been a lot of talk about what kind of party the fu KP might be what are our aims what do you stand for people ask who do you represent well it's simple really Fu K P is a party for there are many many out there and sadly they lack tyshee certainly Herbert's Muppets Burks nukes pranks Wally's divs wessex eejits none T's tools weebles d'oeuvres trunks dweebs pill extraños plonkers doofuses dipsticks donuts bungalows ham touches knuckleheads dhabas tubes dolts chumps Blockheads goons Nagas blurts buffoons saps spanners dingbats clown shoes goofs riders planets hat stands plums Doyle's pilchard the double yokas dorks dimwits lackwits half-wits twits and tits they've long been catered for by the mainstream parties but the simple truth is the dickered community as long gone unnoticed and that is what Fu K peaceful inside' many of us there is a let's come out wrong but with fu K P you can be the you want to be assured that you're in the company of other who see the world the way you do so come the right moment you know what to do vote fu K P showing off your own jokes now so there you go we were a party for this gave us a chance the social media and the video media gave us a chance to have a go all the parties which once we embarked on the project became off actual target rather than just you kid in fact we became fastidious in making sure that we didn't just tilt tilt at UKIP's windmill our subject became how you run a political campaign and what people are offered by the way of electoral politics these days how it's been conducted lately it's descent into the inane and reactive is cocked comedic red meat so for instance when Labour pledged to supply two thousand more nurses we would pledge immediately twenty thousand and one because there has to be more to politics than cries of we want eight and we won't wait because he named politics isn't news any historian will tell you nor as I said before will you get me saying joke or satirical candidates anew that's however not how some took it online you're making a mockery of democracy came to charge immediately well gee I'm sorry can democracy not cope how do you know you do know you don't have to vote for me so all right wait I'm not mocking democracy by taking part in an election by hopefully getting people to think about what's in front of them okay fine you know nothing about politics people would say I wouldn't mention on done history here because didn't really apply myself for three years so there we go but anyway ran into the corny scene on my first day here so anyway that's that's a beside a point they'd say you know nothing about politics I think well I know I'm intimately well related for the process is regarding actually applying to run for Parliament so I probably do know something about politics but don't worry about it here's a flavor of what we had to offer in our manifesto pledges whoops no this is my thirteen point common-sense action plan save this country won the pound will be revalued a one pound 10 P so we now worth 10 P more hash tag common sense now that's actually quantitative easing that's actually what quantitive easing is where there you go that was the gag and we had people argue with that seriously hilarious too if you come to A&E and it's neither an accident nor an emergency then you'll be sent to a random hospital department to be practiced on thy glory tweeted the most three foreign policy Germany has been too quiet for too long just saying for immigration this is the greatest country in the world and people want to move here we need MP to make things worse look no further five education instead of a postcode lottery and you improve Street raffle will determine which schools your kids get into six Alex Salmond to be made first minister for Norwich so he can understand what be ignored by the rest of the country is really like I got me a long complaints in Scotland Europe I pledged at the UK will leave Europe by 2025 and the edge of the solar system by 2015 the environment Boris Johnson to be put on an island he keeps saying that's what he wants corporations of globalization bla bla bla bla paradigm bla bla bla bla bla bla dialectic bla bla bla bla GameChanger homes for hardworking families build some houses but without bringing down house prices how hard can it be defense national service but only for people who don't want to do it common sense Laurel order unemployment causes crime I propose to lock up the unemployed can't argue with the logic and local issues South a net to be made the new capital UK Demilitarized Zone to be set up between north and south paddocks but the thing is there they are as the pledges I keep interestingly it came down to this I think you could react to our manifesto pledges in three ways I suppose one you could find them funny right um I stress you could find them funny for any reason you want and I can't tell you why you might even find them funny that's the nature of comedy I can't I can suspect why you might think they're funny but I'll never really know to you could ignore them you can say not for me thanks and you know there's not a comedian on the planet who's convinced they can make everyone laugh we're fine with that or thirdly what you can do is to send into a froth of burning outrage that anyone could have front politics so now the last of these is easily the most entertaining hostility to what we were doing took several forms but the truly grim part was the repetition of the same thing again and again and again and again like at Waterloo they'd come up me in the same old fashion and I'd seen them off the same a favorite was you're trying to take votes off you kid they'd say I'd reply yes and labour and conservative and the others and they're trying to do the same to you Kip - that's how it works I'd reply increasingly wearing Li there were times when I wondered if people that actually thought all that hard about what happens in elections however it was my motivations despite being as plain as the nose on my face I think for running that became an intense subject for discussion conclusion and projection aside from the not particular bright you're doing it for publicity to which you might rejoined it isn't every politician and be I mean show business mate that's hardly revelation mutant zombie facts sprung up all around me about the campaign now the best of these fantasies were helped along worse a dodgy PR that someone had done now there's a genealogy website and then I forget their name so their PR stunt hasn't work that well who every year or so do a piece where they linked to famous people via their ancestry they've linked a bomber with the royal family David Cameron with the Kardashians think of their PR is lousy and the year before last it was my turn bunk look Elmarie David a camera now Murray the distant cousins family records show now it's a mark of the desperation perhaps but they found in my incest ancestry and I'm descended from William Thackeray you wrote Vanity Fair a member of Cameron's family had married a member of Thackery's family in the 1820s something like that neither of us are products of said Union in other words we aren't cousins but yeah the same link could apply to eight hundred thousand other people statistically apparently right now however via the internet this mutated by the internet and thick people being unable to read things at face value let alone critically mutated very fast into David Cameron I being first cousins annoyingly that that he had put me up to running in Fannett south-south sanic seriously now his thing I cannot lie I've met him at a charity - charity functions so I can't say no never met the man but I can say with total confidence that no we are not related and I don't know him either right also and the thing is you want people to be able to work this out for themselves even if we were related so what all right my actual first cousins I don't know what their politics are right so it's pretty unlikely that they could get me to run for Parliament well the anonymous gracious stranger would say you're being paid by the Tory party great I replied away in voice can you not see this is ridiculous is this really how you explain the world really but I was struck in fact by how many people thought that this explain anything this imagined familial link was surely not the best that people come up with to explain something far less i kane comedian runs as joke canada we've already covered those obvious yeah comedian runs his favor to super obscurely relative Swiss gold paying conservative Prime Minister who's got time to take out from fighting an election everyone says the lose by setting up cousin as joke Canada against nationally symbolic candidate of decay of right-wing conservative voting consistency where said candidate polls well yeah that's a better explanation however what I would ask you to consider though is if either of us were Jewish or if our family tree revealed that anyone in my family were Jewish what would that say about this kind of thinking I'm not saying it is that kind of thinking but it's certainly probably the first cousin of it now a brief sidebar one of the favorite things that my online challenges would do was call me Alistair in their interactions when they asked my name Alistair they'd spell it wrong as well despite having popped over to Wikipedia to check it right I've always been known as our the only person who calls me Alistair is my dad when I'm in trouble right and they would draw some sort of conclusion they'd go oh well is that right Alistair as if they pulled back the curtain and revealed the real me things it was usually blokes called Steve who would chuck this one at me having not really considered their they'd abbreviated their own name as well doughnuts now of course being a Tory stooge was a surprise given that the other accusation was that I was a lefty BBC comedian put up to running by the EU this came up a lot to some we must remember everyone regardless of their affiliation is left-wing so being a tourist dude does somehow shoehorn itself into that explanation that the vast majority of my TV work has been for Sky and ITV the people have never really been interested didn't stand in the way of this theory I've done a bit of freelancing for Radio 5 Live no it ran deeper you see show business is rigged in favor of Oxbridge yeah now this of course is born of the prominence of brilliant dozen comedians in the last 50 years not that I'll complain being Oxford opens doors in comedy doors that lead to rooms in Edinburgh with two people in them looking at you and your three pals of the script group wondering why you're bothering but there's more you see thanks to Wikipedia you can find out stuff about me which allows you to know exactly what I'm thinking and why and how I got my break in stand-up now my grandfather is an alumnus of the hall was a diplomat according to one anonymous challenger my grandfather had got me working stand-up indeed when I rolled out this idea and asked him what he meant my online challenger said that before he died when I was 14 my grandfather put in the right calls to make sure I get tryout spots in pubs in Deptford some eight years later yes that's how it works my anonymous friend replied it's reassuring to know the Foreign Office called Camden jugglers comedy club to smooth over the time I died on stage really badly in 1996 finally they were assertions about funding Ronnie for Parliament's potentially really expensive but the amounts you can spend a cat and tightly regulated being a sole candidate meant that I couldn't do what the big parties do and pull resources which is what they're all running into trouble for now within a commission it did mean that it was the most cost effective marketing spend I've ever had my marketing guy couldn't say hey I need to spend more on posters because if he did we'd go to prison the campaign was divided into two sections the long campaign from January and the short campaign which of the last five weeks before polling day the first thing we did was take out an ad on the back of a London free sheet if you call their ad sales department and they quote you know rate card price then you'll find it's more than the whole land long campaign budget if you call them and say come off it mate the charge had considerably less such simple word worldly knowledge was beyond many of our antagonists in fact Nigel Faraj u-clip asserted in his latest autobiography published during the campaign it was called the purple revolution channeling Prince I think he said he claimed in his book that I'd overspent and will be barred from running you blown your budget straight away they'd cry you're going to prison as if anyone would be so stupid we'd repost when we could be asked where we got the money from to pay for the ad became a major bone of contention amongst our dull-witted friends the Conservative Party the Labour Party the EU the EU were all positive is candidates for such underhand dealing then someone spotted that we were making a comedy documentary about the campaign for the channel Dave now Dave are owned by UK TV who are part owned by BBC Worldwide the commercial licensing end of the BBC of course as can happen when dealing with idiots the chronology of these events offered the simplest explanation that nevertheless lay beyond them David approached us about making the programme well after we are up and running not that this deterred anyone from jumping to the conclusion of peculation of malfeasance rather in the manner of mr. Cameron and my deep-sea deploy alee the question of Dave ownership by BBC Worldwide became the BBC funding your campaign it's illegal it's in contravention of their charter agreement that our lawyers had been all over the thing to make sure there wasn't a problem occurred to no one these are the people we were dealing with but still the Bilt bewilderment know who could be paying for the campaign continued long after it had ended a couple of weeks off the campaign had finished a website that called itself Knights Templar which I think's linked to the BMP in some way had another gun it spread all over Twitter saying the BBC had funded my campaign the whole thing started up all over again I spent a day on Twitter replying to every single person who asked that it wasn't know the BBC didn't fund my campaign then when I'd had enough I snapped and I replied to the millionth who paid for your campaign question I replied me I'm a millionaire it stopped after that to be honest I was really pissed off at the assumption I couldn't afford to pay for it myself see comedians are arrogant and mercenary people so what else going on here it's what I wonder because social media is brought to the surface all these people who seem to be hard of thinking after we'd gone into the campaign to be absurd not to smoke absurdity out into the open from people who claim that they're politically engaged people who moreover seek to persuade you round to their point of view by calling you a traitor as their opening gambit because I wish I knew but it wasn't a very happy insight into the way people who say they're politically engaged engaged seem to think I think it maybe ties in with the current fashion for sort of magical solution politics everything will be alright for leave you you everything will be alright if Scotland becomes independent that sort of trumps magic one brand of politics where he can he can stand up and say he'll simultaneously have nothing to do with the Middle East and be tough on Isis and people buying because he's waving his magic wand in a way this reminds me of consumerism we want our politics like this and we want it now we'll send it back if we don't like which manifest itself in a stubborn refusal to understand what democracy actually is I think picking the people who are going to try and make all the seriously limited compromises that they can its granular it's sticky it's difficult it's not instant furthermore the idea that government can pull all these kinds of strings to make these things happen a notion expressed I think it is very worse than X the people who said that the Scottish indie referendum was was rigged shows a deep and inexplicable faith in what government can achieve anyway they similar eyes you think government's useless but it can still pull off these amazing secret plots I mean they can't sort out my bins right so how they can rig an election I don't know strikes me as maybe they're concentrating on rigging elections rather than the bins maybe that explains it the other element of our campaign was actual political campaigning or sort of actual political campaigning I'll say sort of atras we didn't do too much of it because the aim wasn't really to win the seat this is also criticism levelled at me that I wasn't serious about winning the seat but so Canada don't vote for me whatever modern campaigning involves getting your message across getting a message across has to be done via the television news media and it's actual first cousin print print off for me the platform of writing thousands of words pieces peppered with gags and stuff about politics you could flesh out an idea properly quite nicely the newspaper especially if they get allow you to just quote your stuff verbatim it can be a tricky business trying to write funny copy in a paper it's very often a sub or someone else in the editorial food chain will often simply remove whole chunks often the punchlines and you read the paper with your head in the hand in your hands the funnies at least as you intended them disappeared disemboweled by someone who's worried about the format of the page but we have an excellent run in the broadsheets and the tabloids a lot alike being daft about elections and electoral promises is as firm a comment on those subjects I think as any worthy op-ed and hopefully more chuckle s'en so while we have fun with the papers the TV people were much more difficult to deal with our first day of campaigning was when we launched my candidacy in Margate we went down to Margate to register running with the council the local TV impressment abundance it was fun but what was interesting was it was becoming clear that rather than engage with the joke as it was presented to them some of the hacks were looking for a scoop this could be as basic as you're not really a pub landlord which is true I'm not no amazing well done give us off a biscuit but that's not really journalism is it it got most intent to the next time we organize the stunt and this was an actual stunt that we organized now the night in the eagle we discussed my running I'd had one of those immediate ideas that you can't just shrug off I would parachute into the constituency literally now I've done some parachuting along the way for a program and then again out of curiosity because my first jump was over so quickly I felt I had no way of relating to the experiences in any way I put this idea forward knowing full well that the last time I'd parachute I got to the door the aircraft and thought to myself for trembling bowels why are you doing this why you could die but it seemed like too good a gag not to try and pull off anything for the joke so a team found an aerodrome in Kent where we'd be able to do a tandem jump the thing we extracted someone else they get to share the terror the one thing the one condition required was that I weighed under 90 kilos I got my kids pink scales from beside the bathroom Lou got on them and even as we made the phone call about arrangements no problem 85 kilos we were clear to take off I arrived ahead corner Lee excitable ilk nervous there was some numerous TV crews there as well as press cameras we had two parts of the day's activities we do the jump then head over to sandwich for sandwiches for the manifesto launch and a walk about politician style the team at the parachuting Club were very friendly and after I'd had my breakfast in the club cafe taught me through what we were going to do then we came to the bit row got my credit card out sure but before you do that the one for the club said can you get on the scales please no problem I said I got on the scales and lo and behold I was 97 kilos you're too heavy to jump you can't you can't jump she said oh I replied partly relieved now what there we are it seems that I'm too yet another tragic victim of this country's obesity epidemic well now well we did what they're doing politics and we went into spin mode for the very first time a hushed conversation we decided not to tell the assembled hacks and cameramen yet and we decided what to do and pretty quickly and we agreed that this was almost actually not almost this was better than me doing a jump a up with the right jokes would do the trick far more effectively than actually parachuting and I didn't have to risk death we would make a virtue of a necessity or at least the best of a bad job I got on cracking out a statement here's the statement that I read to the press ladies and gentlemen I have a short statement to make unfortunately today's stunt and that's exactly what it is regardless of the publicity it might generate the stunt has had to be canceled due to unforeseen circumstances it seems that I'm too heavy to jump it's a double whammy not only am i yet another tragic victim this country's at Beast the epidemic but my life is being held back by health and safety gone mad gone are the days when a British citizen could throw themselves out of a plane regardless of the risk is this the country one a living god Elvis if the Germans try again but this couple of running themes but there's more I was weighed on metric scales scales that proved conclusively the dead hand of Brussels on the British Way of life I think we've taken our relationship with Europe to a level that frankly is gone against common sense and certainly against self-interest I vow if I ever get into power I will do all I can to remove much of the health and safety legislation that is holding this country back I hope however that this settled once and for all the issue whether I am a political heavyweight now as I sat the office right in this copy various journalists or film crew would come over and eyeball me one of them actually came up to me said is it true you're not jumping I said don't be daft of course I'm jumping my first actual lie as a political candidate but see the true pleat one of the parachute Club had told someone and we had to get straight on to controlling the story - spinning I finished drafting my statement with the press waiting at the fence on the boundary the runway I delivered my statement you were never going to jump came to cries this is a setup etc one journalist in particular caught my eye Michael Crick you might be familiar with him Channel 4's hatchet man his style is to try to destabilize you two out with a tricky question get you to give a grumpy answer rather than to you know maybe listen to what you have to say let me do my jokes and he carried doing on doing this all day now thing is Creek along with the online responses is perhaps was what was so interesting for me about this whole exercise as far as I was concerned we were engaged in satire and satire is a term much abused and disabused has many forms but there's a problem with it I think currently part of the problem is that it seems to occupy strange cultural space and one that's explicitly intellectual satire is serious it's worthy it's important received opinion seems to suggest all of these things its intellectual in its makeup it tells truth to power it dresses down the mighty it punches up whatever that means in a pluralistic democratic society where power sluices around like mad but above all it's legit it gets written about satire is pissed taking with a degree right it causes chin stroking all of this cultural baggage especially the baggage of legitimacy can lead I'd say to a lot of things that are explicitly satirical being overlooked but not even being spotted as satire I'd argue that the satire boom of the 1960's was a white-collar phenomenon the shock of Peter Cook alan bennett jonathan miller at al wasn't so much their attitude than that they were the people who should have ended up being politicians and diplomats taking the piss out of politicians and diplomats that's there for satire the thing is the previous decades spike milligan used his surrealist surrealist chaotic approach to satirically slice up britain but because he wasn't white collar he's never been credited with the show's mocking of class authority war bureaucracy because it's all silly voices Ealing comedies which rose and fell in the decades following the war were openly satirical and cynical and content though they display the conservative streak that satire can often exhibit exhibit and they're therefore non you for opinion makers and satire rather than what gets called political comedy which is an invariably left-wing offshoot right has a tendency to comment on sit aside from the things it's commenting on rather than do what we were doing and wearing the clothes of the object and inhabiting its environment which is probably why some journalists with some jealously there was a sense that we were on their patch so we're actually involved in the thing others notably the political darts at the times like the fact that someone was at least tackling the assert ease of the campaign head-on by engaging with by taking part in it on election night itself I was asked again you're not a real pub landlord are you you're not serious about your policies and I replied should you be asking that of all the candidates are they serious about their policies aren't you making a mockery of politics the reporter asked me as on the split screen a man dressed as Elmo from Sesame Street Street stood next to David Cameron in Whitney why don't you ask Elmo that so we go back to sandwich now the press launch we had that sandwich was chaotic another candidate Nigel from the reality party who want to legalize acid stood at the front amongst other things that's that's not representative there platform coming thank you dope as well he's very nice Nigel he's an idiot if he checks out the podcast hi Nagy um he claimed I was cashing in on Ferraris publicity even as he cashed in on mine the layers of irony evident to everyone but Nigel I think as the hacks and they were from all over the world we have people from Guyana Germany was extraordinary shouted questions I began to get a nagging sense of something I hadn't expected to feel sympathy for politicians yeah I know because even though I was delivering jokes such as the manifesto pledge for an extra 10 P and a pound and free beer the eager hacks were trying to derail the whole thing shouting me questions in between Nigel's disconnected and handled heckling politicians after all don't have to be politicians they do it for all the current feeling of their being on the take or if you're typically infantile and not uncommon and you know invitar a cheerleader for either side because they're either evil or stupid politicians become politicians because they want to change the world make a difference see their ideas put into practice it sounds naive that but I think it's actually the case of generalizing of course because ambition and power smudge these motives for sure but the politician is expected to remember your name smile stick to the script have cogent ideas be a team player and sufficiently individual make their way through the journalistic bear pit that passes for scrutiny and everyone hates them for it so some sympathy parsing sympathy of course it faded fast enough because if they want to make decisions and spend our money for us tough but going beyond this pretty sympathy the point is perhaps that because of the way the TV news media digests to regurgitate politics to us it's little wonder that campaigning has degenerated into an alien earring caution about what you say and timidity in the face of possible criticism even then though I'd say this chaotic may be unhelpful media environment is far preferable to say a state media and the other problem that satire or Mickey taking or piss taking or whatever you want to call it has is that it gets outstripped by events as Peter Cook famously remarked Henry Kissinger winning a Nobel Peace Prize marked the official death of satire the world the real world relentlessly outflanks whatever you might come up with Donald Trump in America has left every snarky commentator flat-footed our own experience of this was perhaps best exemplified by the infamous headstone Labor's attempt to demonstrate that its pledges were literally carved in stone by literally carving them in stone it's so differently a couple of days a couple of days before we'd released our own literally back of a packet manifesto on the back of a packet make more stuff sell it for profit that's point one to build new houses for people who make stuff to live in three teach more stuff in school for something about nurses people like nurses five free dogs for all and then this comes out the actual in stone which is no more or less specific than our effort it looks the same I'm is completely ridiculous poor sod compare and contrast I mean that the Health Service was basically the same anyway we did do some actual canvassing I mean you know people would before you into counseling so I've got ahead of myself people would take us seriously there's another video why would people take you seriously when this is our video on immigration this is a party political broadcast on behalf of the free United Kingdom party hello again common sense voters thank you for joining me I'd like to talk to you about immigration the issue that stands before us most of all is of course immigration this issue is embarrassing on every level it points to how far things have been allowed to slip any old date they come over here to take our jobs now they come over to take our benefits will come down but deal with it we must ever since the floodgates are open by the Tony Blair government we've been flooded by flood of immigration literally just look at Somerset last year flooded now this flooding was not caused by gay marriage as summer village nor by the shocking surprise winter weather during winter no this was caused by the sheer weight of Romanian people turning up early for the apple harvest which caused the county to sink into the Bristol Channel so it's time to take action if you KP have already pledged to brick up the channel tunnel we pledge to go further 1 all British beaches are to be mined sorry lady die this is important to British citizens on birth to be issued with a secret password to prove they're British three passports we replaced with a tattooed on ID document for clearly one of the things during people from abroad to here is the wide range of food and offer restaurants to be scaled back to just serving British grub courage etc common sense when you see the daily sight of people who weren't here first Oh jumping the queue of life we a nephew KP want to protect the rights of the people who were here first some people say that's unfair but we in fu KP think it's only right and proper that ginger people our ginger originate if you will should be respected and preserved so one Prince Harry to be elevated to your new role as king of the gingers Danny Alexander as First Minister to the Isle of Wight with its matching squirrels to be made the ginger Kingdom or ginger d'amour ginger star on or something we'll think of a name three ginger it needs to be recognized as a protected species ginger reservations with casinos to be set up this common-sense approach to immigration and nationality is a complete departure from what the other parties are offering you mark my words they'll all be copying this stuff by the weekend if you KP pledging to tell you the things we reckon you want hear about immigration vote fu KP vote common sense people got really angry about that video now the few afternoons canvassing that we did do were uneventful but really stressful never was I more keenly aware that what we were doing might be getting up people's noses it also brought home to me how much people don't pay attention to politics walking down the high street and Broadstairs I'd rather get people wanting selfies accompanied with the cheery what are you doing here or a general chat about the election with my attempt at can I count on your vote to type politician behavior we had several gloomy conversations with people worried about what might happen if South Fanuc did vote in a you Kip MP that the constituents constituencies reputation would be xenophobia central on one occasion a man stood in the street and shouted at me that I was a about how I was a fool I mean I know I am that's the job but it was fairly threatening and there were a couple of other bitter encounters with people interestingly one of the charges I had leveled at me online but I was making a mockery of the people of South fanuc which I don't really understand as you saw we only mentioned we've only mentioned local issues very very briefly with the DMZ that never came up when I was actually in South fanuc I felt we were crediting the people of the constituency with a sense of humor now notably one thing that a candidate does gay if you run forever any of you run for Parliament you get to put a leaflet through the letterbox of every door in the constituency it's fantastic so we drop a leaflet with our policy pledges on it which are a series of jokes obviously and an urge to people to vote because that's after all what we were about and no marketing campaign can possibly come close to that one doorstep encounter sticks in my memory very clearly though for our dave program we filmed some actual doorstep I found it really uncomfortable extremely uncomfortable experience we'd run on plenty of doorbells and only spoke spoken to a couple of people with the crew standing by with consent forms for anyone we spoke to we approached a red brick house on a corner unremarkable in itself I rang the doorbell and waited with the comedian Matt Ford who was playing my campaign manager Matt at one point worked for Tony Blair's campaigning team in 2003 that's the real thing he understands how politics works he's doorstep hundreds of thousands of voters and he was very nervous I was nervous reading doorbells is as far distant from the very safe confines of doing a show in a theater which is full of people who paid to see you you know you're all there on an agreement presenting the act in the real world in the outside world throws up so many hostages to things going wrong and I was really feeling this nervous they were shuffling and banging from inside the house hello I said I wonder if I could talk to you about the general election yes you can but your car film me okay I said friggin things he'd come to the door be rude not to listen alright there's one thing I will say said I'll manage sent a geriatric at best the worst thing ever happened this bloody country was getting rid of Church and at the end of the wall and that @ly government coming in they ruined everything we nationalization after that was jobs for the boys and the places never recovered thank you I said reeling from this blistering rejection of post-war consensus politics sadly he wouldn't sign the release form so election night beckoned I had a show that evening in Dartford something the spectator who he ran into earlier had revealed a few weeks earlier basically by going online and look at my tour dates journalism doctors only an hour and a half at the road from our gate we rented a jumbo Cruiser a rock-and-roll tour bus with bunk beds as the counselor told us when we register our application to run that there will be 72 media outlets expected in town for the count account was being conducted the Margate winter guards a rather splendid and slightly crumbling seaside venue I'm familiar with from having played it a few times over the years we took the bus after the show into after the show and Dartford the crowd wishing me luck and spent the hour and a half which coincided with the polls closing trying to watch the BBC's coverage on an iPad with a bad 3G connection the coverage itself consisted as it always does before Sunderland declares its result of idle talk about exit polls and not a lot else labour putting on a brave face as they had an idea of what was to come the exit polls were telling the tale that no one had predicted ed Miliband hadn't broken through the Lib Dems were being wiped out often being replaced with the very Tories that voters were angry with the Lib Dems for going into coalition with puzzlingly and Scotland had turned into a virtual one-party state and what if South panicked well before we arrived in Margate it was pretty clear that Nigel Faraj you Kip had not won the seat there was even a rumor that was quickly dispelled when we met the team that Labour in second place and that you Kip were in third on arriving I exited the Jumbo cruiser with the strains of we are the champions waving cheerily to the assembled TV cameras as it was Nigel frosh was nowhere to be found reminiscent of Alex Salmond leaving Aberdeen on the night of the independence referendum in a private jet and then flying around in circles over the North Sea for Aras in a holding pattern out of the media's gaze inside the Winter Gardens once you got through the fug of dope smoke that seemed to have settled around members of the nation of the media parted to let me in the team through to our table each candidates table had a round each candidate's team at around banqueting table without the tablecloth the conservative table were very cheery they gave us the thumbs up label were despondent they felt that they've been abandoned by the leadership during a campaign and we're correspondingly aggrieved the you keep table was like a scene from downfall the UK activists seemed crushed crumpled by events you hadn't claimed the seat and the Dear Leader had made it clear he'd resigned if he didn't win a seat in parliament in a party that could best could be described as a one-man band this was clearly a big problem the kippers gave me dirty looks though none of them called me Alister or suggested I was only there because my grandfather had fixed it for me one of them a lad of eighteen came to talk to me on the floor he was very charming those seemed to stood on its head the old max him about being a communist at 18 i inwardly wished him better luck getting laid part of the way the count operates is candidates and the people they nominate are called counters and are allowed on the count floor I found being on the floor quite moving it was democracy in action right then and there now cynics might say that we have no democracy and it makes no difference anyway but here were people taking part in the count itself counting the votes of those who chosen to get involved without compulsion of course in the hope of having their voice heard it might be an imperfect system but there it is I'll pay you the compliment of allowing you to draw your own conclusions the count was delayed I have a friend who works in BBC News someone else in on the conspiracy obviously who kept texting me to say how much the count was delayed by fanuc counts of accounting to MPs votes as well as local elections which ran across constituency boundaries in complex and possibly confusing ways and they were doing it with the world's media parked in their front room needless to say they were taking to you care this delay by the way soon after the general election mutated into rumours that Fanny had been rigged complete with a very entertaining hashtag hashtag panic rigged if you want to go and look at that it's quite funny whenever I encounter people who claim the polls been rigged I simply told them well take your suspicions to the police get a look didn't do and of course they never did so we waited a bus as well stocked with alcohol and other essentials so we're able to make it through the night I slept for about court of an hour excited as I was by here being here in the heart of a major event the following morning around 11:00 think I prefer to rely on my memory of events rather than what the actual timings were we made our way to hear the count which is finally going to be heard Nigel Faraj arrived with several large chaps in Believe It or Not Blackshirts but they were his security the press through questions at him about resigning he carried on regardless he's an impressive operator then all the candidates and their counters were taken around the counting floor where the result could be read to us by the returning officer in case any of us wanted to call for a recount sorry to shed light on this and shatter anyone's illusions that's right when the result is announced for the cameras the candidates already know it or how else would they demand a recount online well know what's gonna run plays excuse me sorry to shed light on them but we know the result Nigel Farage you keep stood next to me everyone he said that depends on what you mean by one Nigel I replied good point he said the numbers were announced that's it that's the conversation we had the numbers were announced I had polled a hist and historic 318 votes 318 people had thought I was the least worst option a triumph a victory justice we've made our way to the stage and I some how far myself between Craig McKinley Conservative candidate and Nigel for us as Craig's victory was announced I pulled a great big surprised face shook his hand and said congratulations the way people do when someone has won something tightly contested online this amounts to evidence that I was working for the Tories watch it again and again and again an apparent you can tell I knew the result in advance which proves online that I was in on the fixing of the constituency although I knew the result in advance having been told it by the bloody returning officer for hours made his speech and buggered off I think that's probably how he described it and didn't wait the other candidates to make their speeches as is the tradition odd for someone who wants to go back to how things were in the old days and so it came to end it was a beautiful day in Margate clear skies the Sun shimmering on the sea as I left the winter gardens a man shook my hand insisting he voted for me and thanks for everything we return to the bus I got out of my pub landlord suit life went back to normal the adventure had ended but for the 318 the dream will never die thanks very much

Channel: St Edmund Hall

Views: 452,369

Rating: 4.6034956 out of 5

Keywords: Al Murray, Democracy, British politics, UK politics, FUKP, Nigel Farage, Pub Landlord, Thanet South, UK elections, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford

Id: Qv8G9yWccfg

Length: 55min 13sec (3313 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 30 2016

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Oh, that's the Pub Landlord guy. I listened to most of this, it's pretty damn good.