Jonathan Pie - joke thief.

[dissolute ocelot]

im pretty sure Matt Forde is entirely bankrolled by the Tony Blair Institute and nobody actually likes him

Matt Forde has a vast audience of people who never actually go see comedy. It's a lucrative market, you don't need to be funny or anything, just flyer extensively and mention whatever gets centrists going (at least going as far as your terrible show). Hey, another positive of the Edinburgh Fringe being cancelled!

[Stone Cold Steve Austin]

Forde is a cunt and his material is shit, but I will say this for him, as a live performer when he's on he has an incredible energy and ability to get a crowd going.

I also cringe when I hear comedians revere him but after I saw him on a few mixed bills I started to see what they saw in him

[notjosh]

From the same school of people who think Matt Forde is a 'political genius'

This is a weird thing to still be thinking about, but I'm convinced that when Matt Forde interviewed Chuka Umunna on Unspun in 2016, he was so smitten with him that at one point he got carried away and thought Chuka was trying to hold his hand, having to quickly back out of it at the last minute, like a Gervais trying to high-five a Chris Rock.

See what you think:
https://youtu.be/Il89yhPhM-k?t=139

[Utter Shit]

Easily generic enough to dismiss as a coincidence, no matter how much of a twat Jonathan Pie is.

I got into a bit of an argument with a guy a while back who claimed someone had plagiarised his joke despite it being about as obvious an observation as you could make about this particular topic:

https://twitter.com/sobisamazing/status/1248304323534229506

He didn't seem especially convinced by the possibility it was a coincidence even when I pointed out that plenty of other people had made the exact same joke before him.

[Bernice]

This is a weird thing to still be thinking about, but I'm convinced that when Matt Forde interviewed Chuka Umunna on Unspun in 2016, he was so smitten with him that at one point he got carried away and thought Chuka was trying to hold his hand, having to quickly back out of it at the last minute, like a Gervais trying to high-five a Chris Rock.

See what you think:
https://youtu.be/Il89yhPhM-k?t=139

Oh my god. I've never seen an interviewer so in love with their subject. I'm fully backing that being an aborted hand hold.

[phantom_power]

If it looks like a tory, sounds like a tory and acts like a tory it is probably a tory. Therefore Matt Forde is a fucking tory

[Small Man Big Horse]

Forde is a cunt and his material is shit, but I will say this for him, as a live performer when he's on he has an incredible energy and ability to get a crowd going.

I also cringe when I hear comedians revere him but after I saw him on a few mixed bills I started to see what they saw in him

I disagree, I saw him back in January and though he definitely is a cunt and his material is unbelievably shit, I thought his delivery and performance was very average, not awful, just extremely nothing-y. He kept on staring at my friend too, perhaps because he found her attractive, or perhaps because she hated him as much as I did and wasn't hiding the fact, but either way she found it really unsettling.

If it looks like a tory, sounds like a tory and acts like a tory it is probably a tory. Therefore Matt Forde is a fucking tory

Yeah, he claims to support labour but spent the hour I saw him ripping in to Corbyn, while only occasionally making the mildest of jibes against Boris, it was pretty sickening behaviour all in all.

[Stone Cold Steve Austin]

I disagree, I saw him back in January and though he definitely is a cunt and his material is unbelievably shit, I thought his delivery and performance was very average, not awful, just extremely nothing-y. He kept on staring at my friend too, perhaps because he found her attractive, or perhaps because she hated him as much as I did and wasn't hiding the fact, but either way she found it really unsettling.

Think I saw him three times, once he was average and nothing as you described and twice he had the place bouncing. I suspect he needs to be a precise amount of drunk to be good and going over or under kills him

[beanheadmcginty]

Genuinely thought until now that Jonathan Pie and Matt Forde were the same person. I've never actually bothered looking at a picture of them so somehow my brain had conflated them.

[phantom_power]

Matt Forde looks like what you would get if you asked someone to describe a classic posh boy tory rugger bugger

[Fried Egg Sandwich]

Didn't realise we weren't allowed to like Jonathan Pie. Why all the anger at him in this thread? Genuine question.

[Wacky Homemade Badges]

Tom Walker - the guy who is Pie - made his first videos on his own, then teamed up with Andrew Doyle who has co-written all the stuff since. So you've got someone who had never previously thought about politics learning all about it from a Spiked person.

[Pink Gregory]

And also just kind of not being very good?

[Wacky Homemade Badges]

Yes, and a cunt.

[Barry Admin]

Didn't realise we weren't allowed to like Jonathan Pie. Why all the anger at him in this thread? Genuine question.

Above and beyond him being shit and not really having an act beyond "shouting and swearing a lot", my main problem can probably be summed up by the YouTube title that came up in my feed earlier today:

Owen Jones meets Jonathan Pie | 'Identity politics are used to shut down debate'

The second highest voted comment is:

What the modern left should be: Jonathan Pie
What the modern left actually is like: Owen Jones

He's another disengenous culture war cunt who pretends to be left-wing, despite having written much of his material with a Spectator/Spiked Online dickbag. He's also another guy who wanks on about free speech all the time, despite not understanding it, and in doing so he's tacitly supporting the far right and white supremacists.

[idunnosomename]

the funniest thing about Jonathan Pie is if you imagine him in a park shouting at a camera on a tripod

[Bernice]

The success of Pie among the kind of people he appeals to is symptomatic of the total fucking void at the heart of both British satire and "sensible politics". No surprise Matt Forde's come up in the same breath, then.

[Brundle-Fly]

He seems a bit too much rant and not enough jokes for me. I like his energy though and sympathise with some of the exasperation. One thing that does slightly raise my hackles is when people say "this thing is liked by the sort of people who...insert dismissive generalisation here... etc, etc' 

Apart from Stewart Lee, which current British political comedians are recommended?

[The Lurker]

the funniest thing about Jonathan Pie is if you imagine him in a park shouting at a camera on a tripod

There was a video on Twitter of someone who spotted Pie doing exactly that all by himself. I can't find it though so you'll just have to take my word for it that it definitely exists.

[Pink Gregory]

They must be out there but then a lot of standups talk about politics without it being their thing.

Nish Kumar I suppose?  Although I've seen very little of his standup.  I saw Tez Ilyas supporting Josie Long a few years ago and he had some good stuff. 

But I suppose that's abstract "politics" rather than party politics and it seems pointless to joke about these days as it's A - Beyond satire and B - mostly going on on social media

[Brundle-Fly]

But I suppose that's abstract "politics" rather than party politics and it seems pointless to joke about these days as it's A - Beyond satire and B - mostly going on on social media

I remember Rory Bremner saying that he gave up with impersonating politicians in the '00's because they were all so bland and identikit. Not like the old Spitting Image days where everybody was a character. Careful what you wish for? Now the politicians are just caricatures, how do you effectively send up people like Johnson, Rees Mogg or Trump when they're sending up themselves perfectly fine?

[madhair60]

There was a video on Twitter of someone who spotted Pie doing exactly that all by himself. I can't find it though so you'll just have to take my word for it that it definitely exists.

Yeah, this existed. Scrubbed from the 'net now, wish I'd saved it.

[BritishHobo]

The success of Pie among the kind of people he appeals to is symptomatic of the total fucking void at the heart of both British satire and "sensible politics". No surprise Matt Forde's come up in the same breath, then.

Now that you've said this, I can't get it out of my head that Jonathan Pie is basically watered-down Malcolm Tucker. You know how for some reason that character seems to have been divorced from all the context of his character - where much of the satire is in the impact of 'spin' and media influence on politics - to just become 'the man who does the funny rants'. I've posted about this before, but you see those accounts on Twitter where it's Malcolm Tucker on Brexit or whatever, as if his rants were always brilliant left-wing views rather than Malcolm abusing people who got in the way of whatever plans were most beneficial to him. He had a specific role in the climate they were satirising, but he's been reduced to an idea of a man who always rants about how Tories are twatwaffles and Donald Trump is a spunk-cannon. Jonathan Pie is basically that, isn't he?

[keir]

What really fucked me off about Pie was after Ed Miliband lost and several people who really ought to have known better watched his video and said "he's right you know, he's got it so right, Labour lost because of 'identity politics', they should have kept quiet about the fact that there's still plenty of work to do to make things fairer for minorities, because the salt of the earth white working class who aren't racist at all go mental if you say that minorities still have it tough and vote BNP"

[Sebastian Cobb]

I can't find the tweet but Rab Florence posted a picture someone had snapped of Pie recording one of his videos, raging into his camera on a tripod obviously by himself with - "nae pals, colour me shocked".

[Petey Pate]

What really fucked me off about Pie was after Ed Miliband lost and several people who really ought to have known better watched his video and said "he's right you know, he's got it so right, Labour lost because of 'identity politics', they should have kept quiet about the fact that there's still plenty of work to do to make things fairer for minorities, because the salt of the earth white working class who aren't racist at all go mental if you say that minorities still have it tough and vote BNP"

Pie didn't exist until after the Ed Miliband era. You might be thinking of his post-EU referendum videos or his one after Trump won, where he said pretty much the same thing.

I thought the first Pie video was decent. It was done convincingly enough that it could trick people into thinking it was a real news reporter losing his shit. I don't know why he keeps up with the pretence of being a news reporter when this gimmick only really works once.

[SavageHedgehog]

His Trump one was the one where he said "maybe now we'll have a real conversation" or some such right? If so I have to admit I neither knew nor suspected he was a "comedy persona" at the time, but given that his persona seems to represent what he actually thinks just louder I don't really feel embarrassed about that.

[Bernice]

Now that you've said this, I can't get it out of my head that Jonathan Pie is basically watered-down Malcolm Tucker. You know how for some reason that character seems to have been divorced from all the context of his character - where much of the satire is in the impact of 'spin' and media influence on politics - to just become 'the man who does the funny rants'. I've posted about this before, but you see those accounts on Twitter where it's Malcolm Tucker on Brexit or whatever, as if his rants were always brilliant left-wing views rather than Malcolm abusing people who got in the way of whatever plans were most beneficial to him. He had a specific role in the climate they were satirising, but he's been reduced to an idea of a man who always rants about how Tories are twatwaffles and Donald Trump is a spunk-cannon. Jonathan Pie is basically that, isn't he?

Aye. Pabulum for the cockwomble crowd.

[Thursday]

Mind you Alastair Campbell Campbell seems to have rehabilitated his image by saying "right-on" things on twitter. Centrists/Liberals seem to be very willing to forgive (I say forgive, they largely just don't care) the war-crimes if you just have a pithy line about the tories, so I suppose it fits that they would see Malcolm Tucker this way.

[pancreas]

He really puts the willies up me. I think there's something wrong with him. Like maybe something really bad.