As if the coup of Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Johnson isn’t bad enough, we have to endure the appalling spectre of his éminence grise the Minister for the 18th century defending it in his suave, patronizing, patrician tones.

The Haunted Pencil’s style reminds me of yet another Monty Python classic featuring John Cleese:

Son: Good evening, mother. Good evening, Mrs Niggerbaiter.

Mrs Niggerbaiter: Ooh, he’s walking already!

Mrs Shazam: Ooh yes, he’s such a clever little fellow, aren’t you? Coochy coochy coo.

Mrs Niggerbaiter: Hello, coochy coo.

Mrs Shazam: Hello, hello… [they chuck him under the chin]

Mrs Niggerbaiter: Oochy coochy [son gives tight smile]. Look at him laughing… ooh, he’s a chirpy little fellow! Can he talk? Can he talk, eh?

Son: Yes of course I can talk, I’m the Minister for Overseas Development.

Mrs Niggerbaiter: Ooh, he’s a clever little boy—he’s a clever little boy! (gets out a rattle) Do you like your rattle, eh? Do you like your little rattle? Look at his little eyes following it, eh? Look at his iggy piggy piggy little eyeballs eh… Ooh, he’s got a tubby tum-tum…

Son [interrupting]: Mother, could I have a quick cup of tea please—I have an important statement on Rhodesia in the Commons tomorrow…

* * *

By now Wee-Smug has joined the Queen and Brian Sewell on my shortlist of readers for a BBC Radio 4 serialization of Miles Davis’s autobiography (“Listen with Motherfucker”).

And here’s a fun party game to mollify your irritation with Pompous Brexit Twats. Whenever you hear them braying some fatuous remark about “taking back control of our borders / laws / own country [blah blah]”, just replace the noun with “bowels”—”we can finally look forward to taking back control of our bowels”, and so on.

Cf. Stewart Lee’s notional cabbie: “These days, you can get arrested and thrown in jail just for saying you’re English” (in my post How to be English). See also his brilliant routines in A French letter and The c-word; and several more fine critiques of xenophobic bigotry under the Lee tag.

Such levity is all very well (cf. Peter Cook on Weimar satire), but this is our country that these Rich White Politicians are smugly destroying, FFS. Soon we’ll be a banana republic without the bananas. But at least they’ll be OUR no bananas.

More under my roundup of posts on Tory iniquity.