During the run up to the election I was made aware of Jonathan Pie. First time I saw one of his videos I just thought he was an independent media type pundit who’d decided to present news as if the BBC were really as Left as some (on the Right) claim it is. [1]
But with the second one I began to suspect all was not quite as it appeared. And shortly thereafter I discovered he’s in fact the creation of a guy called Tom Walker; a fictional news reporter, ‘captured’ as if speaking his mind, off-air, in the moments just before or after a broadcast.
It’s a very clever and effective idea.
The first piece of Pie I consumed was A Decade of the Tories, above. I can’t recall exactly what I saw next. But the next one to hit with as much impact as Decade was Election Aftermath, below.
Although I find Pie’s intense and rather hectoring style a bit much, I’m essentially in near complete agreement with what he actually says. In a similar but more clearly satirical vein, I just saw this:
Again, very funny. But, underneath the humour, bone-chillingly depressing.
[1] Oh, the irony! It’s true there are elements of leftism, especially in the kind of group-think PC area. But anyone who knows their political onions will know that many of the BBCs prime news and politics figures for some time now – from Paxo to Andrew Neil and Laura Kuensberg – are card-carrying Tories.