By OhThisBloodyPC

Imagine we’re in a club and we’re determined to enjoy ourselves. They’ve just introduced the up and coming act. Ladies and gentleman, with a stellar cast of very funny writers from TV shows you liked….I give you the comedy product voted most likely to succeed by the Elite of Soho… I’m sure you’re going to endure it, give a big hand to ….. Newzoids.

A few pints in, you’re desperate for something to take your mind off your discomfort. You fight the urge to get up and get more beer or get rid of the dump truck that’s parked on your bladder. Please, you beg, please let this Newzoids act be funny.

It doesn’t start well. I’ve died in comedy clubs plenty of times myself, so Newzoids has my full backing. But soon the reservoirs of simpatico drain away.

A caricature of someone I don’t recognise is saying: “Hello, I’m Stephen Mulhern.” Nope, that name means nothing to me either. The next line reveals that the target of this satirical news-based sketch is some sort of TV presenter. Mulhearn? Sounds like a good catholic boy making his way. Give him a break, I’m thinking.

But no. The joke about this Mr Mulhern is that he’s “a poor man’s Ant & Dec” and that his show is “flogging a dead horse.”

Wait, hang on. As a victim of heckling myself, I’m starting to feel sorry for this blameless Mulhern character. Also, isn’t it a bit rich for a show based on a hit and miss comedy from last century (this show is a poor comedian’s Spitting Image) to accuse poor Stephen of “flogging a dead horse’. Talk about Pot accuses kettle!

It was at this moment the Newzoids comedy troupe began to lose the audience. (Sketch One had been a repeat of last week’s dig at the alleged shallowness of a relationship between Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddlestone.)

So two sketches in, there’s no satire on the great matters of state. Just some snide references to people in the light entertainment industry.

The third sketch was actually about politics. Promising. It was a skit about the hypocrisy of the Parliamentary Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee. They managed a half decent satire on this powerful man’s duplicity. The sketch made this point by reference to how the man, Keith Vaz MP, had been revealed by a newspaper sting, as he posed as a washing machine salesman. The sketch was called “The Vaz Doorstep Challenge.”

But someone had already made this joke, on Twitter, long ago. I’m too modest to say who made the joke on September the fifth, five days before this show went out.

So it wasn’t their joke. And yet, someone at Citrus TV’s “talented team of comedy writers” would have got paid for this joke.

Seems like this Newzoid bunch shouldn’t give anyone lectures about the shallowness of public debate or social justice.

Some years ago, I wrote a satirical news piece on Newsbiscuit, about how closely the plots for the BBC’s Top Gear shows resembled the ‘Old git thundering our of control’ storylines from Last of the Summer Wine. imagine my surprise when I saw a comedian on TV doing exactly the same material. Another time, on a Newbiscuit forum, I posited the idea that there was a silent N in “Tory Cuts.” The following saturday, a BBC Radio 4 comedian make exactly the same joke.

Co-incidence? I can’t prove not! Have you ever read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists? It’s about how the masses give their work away, for a rich elite that exploits them. Hmmm, I wonder if there are parallels in the modern world. Tales of exploitation that the finest brains of the TV industry might recognise.

Originally, the most brilliant man in satire was Peter Cook. In the following decades, as satire became an industry, it was about being pushy and having connections. In those market conditions, the hardest working man in satire emerged as the bloke who worked the canned laughter machine on the Bremner Bird and Fortune show. These days, the king or queen of satire is the one who monitors other people’s Twitter feeds.

Yes, it’s safe to say Newzoids has lost this member of the audience.