Jonathan Pie - Review - Heroes and Villains at Brighton Dome

Pie, the superb comic creation of Tom Walker, is more often to be found online in the guise of a bumptious broadcaster and fictional ‘senior deputy political correspondent for the BBC.’

His ranting reels take coruscating swipes against the political establishment in his ascent to being one of the UK’s sharper satirists.

The material is largely insightful, well-informed and delivered with fury. Often not so much speaking truth to power but bellowing it, and railing against the grotesque absurdities and inequalities of life in 2024.

He’s a hugely impressive performer, venting his invective-heavy, wonderfully creative insults with snarling, manic energy.

Billed as a show which “celebrates the UK’s greatest heroes and takes a verbal blowtorch to its villains” there was far far more of the latter than the former with the vast majority of his directed at the Tories (“you wouldn’t trust them to sell you car insurance”).

A succession of high-rolling Conservatives were given the treatment, including Nadine Dorres, Theresa Coffey, and Liz Truss.

There was a grudging non-royalist respect of the Queen, a cultural leviathan with a £650 million pound estate, but far less so for the new king, much of what was said would sound shocking outside of the context of the show and would make a royal correspondent faint.

Pie insisted it wasn’t just ad hominem attack on the Conservatives (although for quite a lot of the time it seemed to be just that, and no-one seemed to particularly mind).

But he questioned a ruling party with a cabinet dominated by Etonians and in an eviscerating rant-royale at Rishi he argued the move from hedge fund manager to Prime Minister illustrated that plenty was wrong with the current political system.

All of which played well to the Brighton audience who he chided for hissing an image of Thatcher but whom he thanked for taking him to their left-of-centre hearts, evidenced by the need for a second date at the same venue in just a few weeks time.

Pie’s fictional life didn’t feature nearly so much this time around, but it’s been brilliantly fleshed out in his recent Radio Four show – Call Jonathan Pie, that most rare of species – a genuinely funny Radio Four comedy series.

After briefly mentioning Boris Johnson, presumably for old time’s sake (“a big blonde bumbling blob of ego and lies”) there followed a bit of faux confessional sex stuff (and rather fruity it was too) and a slightly sketchy bit about the pressures of modern life and the power of hope, which may or may not have been tweaked by the time of the next visit (Friday March 15).

Comics often grumble about having to come up with marketable concepts for shows, and given the quantity and quality of the material I think he can be forgiven for the lopsided nature of the gig which didn’t quite tally with the tagline.

In a post-truth world it’s more important than ever to have passionate overtly political comics. Through the filter of Jonathan Pie, Tom Walker is doing a cracking job of shouting truth to power, and after all, we can’t leave it all to Gary Lineker...