Armando Ianucci has written a faux-epic poem about Covid

[AllisonSays]

That's what he's done! More details here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/25/armando-iannuccis-epic-covid-poem-its-my-emotional-response-to-the-past-18-months

And here's a sample:

Say, heaving Muse, what catalogue of restraints
And luckless lockdowns fell upon th'unwilling world
Accompanied by pain and stifled shouts of family grief
Till the world's wisest company of brethren
In stately halls and candelabra'd chambers flush
At their desks with freshest data
Brought an end to that wailing noise
And comfort to those begging for release.

I find this kind of thing exquisitely, toe-curlingly cringey. It's very school magazine; there's something about how the pastiche and allusion and self-conscious formal anachronism allow you to have a degree of distance or deniability, so it can be sort of serious and you can try and make it good, but you can also dismiss it as a bit of a joke so you're not really taking a risk by putting yourself out there too much. I don't know, maybe this is just something I specifically find embarrassing as someone who used to write really bad poetry, but it had me grimacing over my coffee this morning. I know Iannuci's strange late-career choices have been done to death on here but the poem (and perhaps the Guardian's decision to grant it a feature article where actual poets get mentioned about five times a year) merited its own thread!

[Twit 2]

Yep, it's embarrassing doggerel. If he wanted to drum up some cash for mentals (a worthy cause) he should have put himself in the stocks so comedy fans can boot him up the cunt for being an establishment disappointment. As it is, it'll sell 4 copies and end up in the ditch where his integrity lies.

[idunnosomename]

Fuckin hell that is embarrassing. Didnt realise it was written like Paradise Lost.

Lo, man called Whitty spake
"Next slide please" mate
And the nation didst quake

Look i just did terza rima fuck your blank verse

[dead-ced-dead]

It's amazing to think this waffle was written by the same man who made The Thick of It.

(I do like his films, though. I enjoyed David Copperfield and The Death of Stalin).

[idunnosomename]

https://twitter.com/DrRobertZands/status/1441672892295663616

Best thing is Armando himself retweeted it.

[Brundle-Fly]

My old school magazine was always using pastiche and allusion and self-conscious formal anachronism between the shoddy drawings of trials bikes, effusive reviews of Marillion records, doom filled poems about WW3 that struggled to find a decent rhyme for 'nuclear bomb' and some tips on how to play Activision's Pitfall.

[idunnosomename]

This is actually quite sad. It's one of the worst things I've seen extracted in a newspaper and I can't bring myself to take the piss out of it. It's so self-evidently complete trash it seems redundant to.

[AllisonSays]

My old school magazine was always using pastiche and allusion and self-conscious formal anachronism between the shoddy drawings of trials bikes, effusive reviews of Marillion records, doom filled poems about WW3 that struggled to find a decent rhyme for 'nuclear bomb' and some tips on how to play Activision's Pitfall.

Haha! I guess I'm thinking of public school magazines or like Oxbridge student magazines, I don't really have any experience of either of those so it's more an imagined idea of what those magazines are like based on, I dunno, Private Eye and PG Wodehouse. My school had a magazine which as I recall was mostly about Rugby and God, in that order.

[sevendaughters]

thesis: guy has been absolute establishment trousercake since TTOI ended.

[Thursday]

This is actually quite sad. It's one of the worst things I've seen extracted in a newspaper and I can't bring myself to take the piss out of it. It's so self-evidently complete trash it seems redundant to.

Yeah something about Armando's descent is just sad and upsetting more than anything. With a lot of the comedians of the era I look at think "well they turned out to be a cunt." with Armando it's starting to feel like watching an elderly relative with Alzheimer's. 

[Brundle-Fly]

Haha! I guess I'm thinking of public school magazines or like Oxbridge student magazines, I don't really have any experience of either of those so it's more an imagined idea of what those magazines are like based on, I dunno, Private Eye and PG Wodehouse. My school had a magazine which as I recall was mostly about Rugby and God, in that order.

Rugby and God. Sarah Lancashire and Stephen Graham's latest glum BBC drama.

[sevendaughters]

so many questions. how did this deal go down? did anyone try and intervene? is Iannucci secretly an agent of Arron Banks? this is equally as bad as Gina Rinehart's self-serving poem she had etched on a boulder.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

Okay so I read it, or tried to read it, and it went something like this

Say, heaving Muse, what catalogue of restraints
And luckless lockdowns fell upon th'unwilling world

...How old is Armando Iannucci? (googles) 57. Yeah that fucking tracks

Take us bravely to that source of all our woe
A wet and withered bat in Wuhan, or, some say,
A bat-lab nearby, carelessly venting bat juice to the world
While, 'tis equally true, Pharma and/or Bill Gates,
In league with Illuminati lizards

Oh, okay, satire. Maybe this isn't just a long drawn-out fart brought on by an extended bout of navel-gazing.

Say how this hero Boris, seeming felled
By the evil mite, coughed back up
His gleaming soul renewed and rode out to fight

Ohhhh shit he's become a Conservative hasn't he. The rest of this poem is going to be all about licking the Government's hole isn't it.

Go back to that day, when the bat first smote Europe
And he, our Hero, to lull it into thinking us unprepared
Deliberately sat at home, in a country house, finishing
A book, and gathering his family in games and sport
Lest the bat gain sense of how ready he was.

Oh - no - okay, more satire. Satirising the government's shitty response.

Part 7

Right, jumping from Part 1 to Part 7 after a summary of Parts 2-6. Is that laziness and lack of commitment to the bit or just poking fun at Le Epic Poetry in general. I choose the latter, it's kind of funny.

Evil's as good as nailed. It's popped its peak.
So I say for sanity's sake, all of you please
Come back from the battle, fetch all your purses,
Rejoice in this moment and get out to eat!"

oh Jesus we're only at the end of the first lockdown

Sensing it safe to emerge, they immediately clamoured
For food at the table and quaffed with full vim
In a hasty feast. What magnificent chickens
Were roasted that day, how laden were the pizzas
Resumed in their ovens.

Armando buddy I think you're losing the whole, um, epic flavour of the language

But lo!
What grim endeavour is this, that would catch
Our kin unawares? For Evil's great Sequel
Flooded the boroughs while we were feasting
And brought a second sickness upon us

BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH too long didn't finish

This is an edited extract from Pandemonium: Some Verses on the Current Predicament (Little, Brown, 4 November). Armando plans to donate his profits to Mental Health UK.

lads just donate to Mental Health UK instead of buying this shite

[sevendaughters]

HANG ON THIS IS AN EXTRACT FROM AN UPCOMING 80 PAGE BOOK

[DrGreggles]

cunts gone bananas

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

HANG ON THIS IS AN EXTRACT FROM AN UPCOMING 80 PAGE BOOK

That means that Parts 2-6, summarised in the Guardian as "lol Matt Hancock was brought to his doom by that woman he was shagging, except they're characters in an Epic Saga" are actually all wrote out in long form.

[idunnosomename]

i suspect Hachette were convinced it will shift at Christmas and that's all that matters really and handed over an advance for it

[sevendaughters]

i suspect Hachette were convinced it will shift at Christmas and that's all that matters really and handed over an advance for it

ugh, stocking filler for people who went to Oxbridge, wherever that is

[AllisonSays]

Yeah I guess it's fodder for the lucrative Centrist Dad market, along with socks with funny things written on them and, like, toilet paper with members of the Tory cabinet printed on it, expensive but useless kitchen paraphernalia, novelty ale, etc.

[Glennhoddleishavingagoal]

O Iannucci who once wrote astute gags
Now, become a tedious old bastard, has
And in so doing the tit hath, metaphorically
Droppethed trow and beshitted whole his legacy
Accepting honours lest it displease his mother
And sensibly centristing within airy echo chambres
Oh hello Hugh! Back in your day, how esteemèd was Armando?
O verily! The Day Today; Partridge; TAIS; Gash...err, less so
Yet he was considered amongst the finest of the wits
We'd all dress up in our Sunday best to marvel at his incisive bits
You'd never think he'd fall so far to wind up on his 'Last Leg'
What's big and small at the same time? A big egg(head)

(With apologies to the CaB bald community)

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

O Iannucci who once wrote astute gags
Now, become a tedious old bastard, has
And in so doing the tit hath, metaphorically
Droppethed trow and beshitted whole his legacy
Accepting honours lest it displease his mother
And sensibly centristing within airy echo chambres
Oh hello Hugh! Back in your day, how esteemèd was Armando?
O verily! The Day Today; Partridge; TAIS; Gash...err, less so
Yet he was considered amongst the finest of the wits
We'd all dress up in our Sunday best to marvel at his incisive bits
You'd never think he'd fall so far to wind up on his 'Last Leg'
What's big and small at the same time? A big egg(head)

(With apologies to the CaB bald community)

Infinitely better than Ianucci's just by virtue of being 100th of the length

(seriously though, very well done. I can't poem at all and I'm in awe of those who can.)

[sevendaughters]

there's a million reasons to be fucked off at this and i am going to allow myself one more before sending myself over this hill here: "this is my emotional response" fuck OFF you emote in a deliberately anachronistic style, fuck off and take your rotten fucking films with you too, you have become the Blair Baby

[idunnosomename]

Armando plans to donate his profits to Mental Health UK.

why is that "plans to" and not "will"?

[Glennhoddleishavingagoal]

Infinitely better than Ianucci's just by virtue of being 100th of the length

(seriously though, very well done. I can't poem at all and I'm in awe of those who can.)

Ah, thanks!

Yes, brevity is hard, but it was something he was once so good at. He's developed a bit too much of an appreciation for his own effluence, methinks...

[chveik]

jesus fuck. pathetic shell of his former self

[Fambo Number Mive]

Armando plans to donate his profits to Mental Health UK.

why is that "plans to" and not "will"?

If the rest of his poems are like the extract, I doubt there will be much in the way of profits.

That poem is a hundred times worse than the least good post in HS Art. He should be ashamed, as should the Guardian, for inflicting that sub sixth form magazine dogshit on us all.

[checkoutgirl]

Armando plans to donate his profits to Mental Health UK.

why is that "plans to" and not "will"?

What profits?

[idunnosomename]

if you say "I will donate profits" and then there are no profits, then you don't donate anything.

I suspect this probably will sell just off his name

[Fambo Number Mive]

O Iannucci who once wrote astute gags
Now, become a tedious old bastard, has
And in so doing the tit hath, metaphorically
Droppethed trow and beshitted whole his legacy
Accepting honours lest it displease his mother
And sensibly centristing within airy echo chambres
Oh hello Hugh! Back in your day, how esteemèd was Armando?
O verily! The Day Today; Partridge; TAIS; Gash...err, less so
Yet he was considered amongst the finest of the wits
We'd all dress up in our Sunday best to marvel at his incisive bits
You'd never think he'd fall so far to wind up on his 'Last Leg'
What's big and small at the same time? A big egg(head)

(With apologies to the CaB bald community)

This is excellent - funny, imaginative and clever, unlike Armando's rectum droppings of a poem.

[buttgammon]

I knew it'd be an awful riff on Milton - didn't he do postgrad work on Paradise Lost? What tedious site. Do they give you a free lobotomy when you accept an honour now?