With his best friend, George Bush, coming to see him in London, Tony Blair has enough problems as it is. Not only is he rapidly running out of friends but he has lost the trust of the common people - focus groups say he will be re-elected, but they all say that they mistrust everything he says.
I hope that channel four have not axed Rory Bremner's usual show and gone for the occasional special in it's place - that would be a great loss. However this special is not as funny as some of their series and more recent shorts have been. Part of the problem is that much of the material here is funny clever as opposed to funny ha-ha. Too much of the show is taken up explaining to us what is happening - this is good as it made me think `wow, didn't know that' but I must admit I wasn't laughing a great deal. The quotes from Tony Blair that punctuate each advert break are damning, but more shocked me than made me laugh.
This is often a problem with their stuff - it all becomes very sharp but not as funny as it should be. The impressions are good, but this show has far too much of the stuff with the focus group and the advisors, i.e. not impressions but caricatures. The stand-up monologues are not as funny as they should be either - again because they are more interesting than anything else. As always the best part of the hour is the mock interview between the two Johns. Not only does this bit satirise the subject really well but it takes things to the point of absurdity and is always very funny.
However, as the Tories struggle to really mount successful attacks on Labour, protestors are practically meaningless and ignored and newspapers rarely mount anything more than one off criticisms of Labour, it is good to see at least one place where the assault is not only consistent but also very clever - even if he forgot to make us laugh this time round!
