Times when politicians were genuinely funny

[Video Game Fan 2000]

i cant find it but Barney Frank asking Rand Paul a series of leading questions based on his father's analogy between nationalised healthcare and slavery, ending with something like "and is that what you're afraid of, sir? as a doctor, that men will turn up at your house at midnight, put shackles on you and force you to perform an operation?" and Paul just looks at him blankly and says "Yes"

[Cuellar]

Donald Trump saying 'Puerto Rico'

[twosclues]

I happened to be in the room for that Bertie suicide comment. The people he was speaking at lapped it up. For me as a 16 year old on work experience it was just glamorous to have witnessed something that was on the news later. Was hoping it would make Reeling In The Years but alas.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Donald Trump saying 'Puerto Rico'

i hate to say it but i still laugh at Trump putting out a press statement attacking Mccain "AND I GAVE HIM THE WORLD'S BIGGEST FUNERAL" - and I wish anyone but Trump had said "i prefer people who weren't captured" too, because its so cold and crass. i wish intentionally so. because that fucker mccain deserved it and american really needs a kick in the balls for keeping its ordinary vets in poverty and despair while elevating special heroes. i love it when someone punctures it, the same as Sir Lord Father Captain Tom digs

edit: its wild to me that all evidence of dozens of trumps public statements has been scrubbed from major search engines as an anti fake news gesture,  this guy was the most powerful man on the planet and of major historical importance and a decent chunk of his public statements are surpressed by private corps. i know orange man bad and all but this sort of thing isnt gonna help anyone

[Petey Pate]

Obama's roasting of Donald Trump at the White House correspondents dinner in 2011 was genuinely quite funny at the time but in retrospect I'd imagine it's far less amusing knowing that it spurred his vengeful running for president.

[Psybro]

I thought this video somebody posted the other day was a good bit of self-parody, although for me it needed at least another three gags so the audience laughter became nervous and started to tail off:

Also the lighting rig reflects off the balloon and make it look like Davey is popping the EU flag

[Urinal Cake]

Former Australian PM Paul Keating https://paulkeatingsta.weebly.com/famous-insults.html

Some choice ones:

On Former Leader of the Opposition, John Hewson:

"(His performance) is like being flogged with a warm lettuce."

"He always turns around when I drop one on him. He can't psychologically handle it."

"I was implying that the Honorable Member for Wentworth was like a lizard on a rock - alive, but looking dead."

"Yesterday, on a personal matter against me, we had old dozy over there, the Honourable Member for Wentworth."

"I have a psychological hold over Hewson...He's like a stone statue in the cemetery."

"I'm not going to be fairy flossed away as my opposite number, John Hewson, is prepared to be fairy flossed away by some spaced out, vacous ad agency."

"I'd put him in the same class as the rest of them: mediocrity."

"This is the sort of little-boy, stamp your foot stuff which comes from a financial yuppie when you shoe him into parliament."

"Hewson's only made the grade on paid advertisements. He's put me under no pressure at all. The only one who's put us under pressure on any issue is Peacock. He's an old cynic and he goes for the issues. Hewson's on television a lot but he hasn't put me under any pressure."


On former Liberal Party Leader and Shadow Treasurer, Andrew Peacock:

"...what we have here is an intellectual rust bucket."

"He, as Foreign Minister, was swanning around the United States of America with Shirley MacLaine or trying to crash one of Ted Kennedy's parties...and he was trying to play statesman...while he swanned around, and then he made a cowardly attack upon the former Prime Minister before slinking back into his cabinet."

"...if this gutless spiv, and I refer to him as a gutless spiv..."

"...the Leader of the Opposition's inane stupidities."

"He could not rise above his own opportunism or his incapacity to lead."

"I suppose tha the Honourable Gentleman's hair, like his intellect, will recede into the darkness."

"He represents nothing and nobody."

"You've been in the dye pot again, Andrew."

"The Leader of the Opposition is more to be pitied than despised, the poor old thing."

"The Liberal Party ought to put him down like a faithful dog because he is of no use to it and of no use to the nation."

"We're not interested in the views of painted, perfumed gigolos."

"It is the first time the Honourable Gentleman has got out from under the sunlamp."

"Bib and Bub. The Leader of the Opposition and his Deputy."

"...a fop such as the present Leader of the Opposition."


On Former Shadow Treasurer, Jim Carlton:

Jim Carlton: "Madame Speaker I ask that the offensive term used by the Treasurer be withdrawn."
Keating: "I withdraw it. I wouldn't hurt his feelings for quids. The fact is that the farmer..."
Allen Rocher: "On a point of order Madame Speaker; Can you please inform the house whether the Treasurer withdrew his comment?"
Keating: "Of course I did. I wouldn't offend Old Rosie over there."

"I was nearly chloroformed by the performance of the Honorable Member for Mackellar. It nearly put me right out for the afternoon."

[Oosp]

Former Australian PM Paul Keating https://paulkeatingsta.weebly.com/famous-insults.html

Some choice ones:

Game over, done and dusted, close the fuckin thread

[rjd2]

Donald Trump saying 'Puerto Rico'

Genuinely looking forward to his death, but those saying the guy had no comedic value are just wrong.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

she just died? you're telling me now, for the first time *Tiny Dancer strikes up in the background*

[Noodle Lizard]

Genuinely looking forward to his death, but those saying the guy had no comedic value are just wrong.

This made me laugh at the time:

I remember optimistically thinking his whole campaign was just sort of mad, irreverent trolling. And now look.

[pigamus]

Mrs Thatcher taking the piss out of Robert Harris

[jobotic]

I'm a Country Member/yeah I remember

is great but is it real? What's a Country Member? Feels like a phrase made for the punchline.

I hope it is real.

[druss]

Dennis Skinner: "Half of the government benches are corrupt"

Speaker: "Will the honourable member retract that statement please?"

Dennis Skinner (without missing a beat): "Alright, half the government benches aren't corrupt"

I thought I remember seeing a YouTube video of this but can't find it anywhere. There's also some results on Google claiming it never happened which is making me question my sanity...

[holyzombiejesus]

Sir Keir tells a hysterically funny story of a hotel mix-up on the campaign trail. It's a really nice moment as he allows all of his natural warmth and charm to shine through. Unfortunately, I can't find the video of him doing it in stage, I think @pancreas posted it originally. But he told it again on LBC, really worth a listen. So funny.

https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/sir-keir-starmer-most-exciting-thing-hes-done/

[Shaxberd]

I'm a Country Member/yeah I remember

is great but is it real? What's a Country Member? Feels like a phrase made for the punchline.

I hope it is real.

The Country Party - of which Turnbull was a member - was an Australian right-wing political party that was aimed at representing regional interests and the farming community. They changed their name to the National Party in the 80s, they still exist but tend to work very closely with the Liberals (and merged with them altogether in Queensland).

The story might still be apocryphal though, it's one of those zingers that sounds too good to be true and I'm not gonna trawl through Australian Hansard trying to find it.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

...is great but is it real? What's a Country Member? Feels like a phrase made for the punchline.

I hope it is real.

I heard it on a Gay Daleks sketch on TV Offal in the late nineties and assumed it was a (slightly contrived) Victor Lewis Smith original.

[non capisco]

It was easier to laugh at Trump when I assumed he was a spent political force but even at the time I found his bizarre cadence of "China has total respect for Donald Trump and for Donald Trump's very very large....a-braiiin" unintentionally funny.

[Bently Sheds]

I honestly believe that if Boris Johnson had joined the Footlights instead of twatting around playing politics & burning fifties in front of the homeless during his University years, he'd be a beloved comedy actor/entertainer along the lines of Fry & Laurie, Rowan Atkinson or John Cheese.

[studpuppet]

Can't be arsed to go through those Churchill quote videos but there was the story of him in the urinals having a slash when Atlee walks in to piss next to him.

Churchill shuffles away mid-stream, and Atlee half-joking says, 'Bit stand-offish today aren't we Winston?'

Churchill replies, 'Show a socialist something strong and successful and he'll try to grab it...'

[superthunderstingcar]

I honestly believe that if Boris Johnson had joined the Footlights instead of twatting around playing politics & burning fifties in front of the homeless during his University years, he'd be a beloved comedy actor/entertainer along the lines of Fry & Laurie, Rowan Atkinson or John Cheese.

Nah, he'd have been on HIGNFY once, bombed, and then never got asked back.

Best he could have hoped for was to take Richard Hammond's role in some shit for cunts with Clarkson.

[touchingcloth]

[studpuppet]

(Space left where I'd painstakingly put all the image links for the Farage crash)




Another beach-related one:







https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/gallery/welsh-ukip-candidate-hauled-safety-8751796

[Schlippy]

Ed Balls

Former Australian PM Paul Keating https://paulkeatingsta.weebly.com/famous-insults.html

Some choice ones:

The Aussies really put the rest of us to shame, don't they? Shitting themselves in McDonalds, eating a raw onion live on TV, being deposed by the CIA, drowning at sea, it's just a non-stop laugh riot down there. And that's just the prime ministers!

[non capisco]

eating a raw onion live on TV,

Tony Abbott was a Fred West stan.

[Mr Farenheit]

Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples" (covering 2000 years over four volumes but apparently quite superficial and selective) was slagged off by Atlee who said it should have been called "Things in History Which Have Interested Me'
ZIIIIING!!!

Michael Foot's speech before the fatal vote of no confidence in Callaghan has him trolling David Steel. He calls him a 'young man', describes Thatcher as going to battle 'behind a Scottish Nationalist shield with the boy David holding her hand'.
He then describes him as having 'passed from rising hope to elder statesman with no intervening period whatsoever'
ZIIIING!!!!!

John Smith's 'Is it any wonder we live in a country where.... hotels fall into the sea' is quite funny.

[Cuellar]

I can't remember the specifics, but Trump was talking about Desantis or someone 'begging' him for a statement of support, or something (yeah this isn't very clear or helpful sorry) and Trump launched into a classic bit about Desantis pleading with him, in tears, to put out a statement of support which Desantis had drafted, and Trump said something like 'so I said oh OK, I guess I'll do it - so I took a look at the statement and it was terrible so I rewrote it'

There was something about how he'd already made Desantis out to be feeble so you think his agreeing to publish the statement is Trump taking pity on him but then he just sticks the knife in AGAIN by saying the statement was shit.

It's just another example of his incredible capacity for cruelty but it made me laugh. Like the comments about John McCain - just audaciously mean spirited and spiteful.

[Senior Baiano]

John Smith was a dryly funny guy, Robin Cook as well from that era. Neil Kinnock wasn't, but unfortunately he thought he was hilarious.

[poodlefaker]

The country member thing comes from gentlemen's clubs; country members lived outside London, so got cheaper membership.

[Senior Baiano]

Mrs Thatcher taking the piss out of Robert Harris

What was this about? "That Boys from Brazil but with Stalin book was shit bruv"