Jonathan Pie: Fake News (Corona Remix)
Internet phenomenon is an overworked phrase, but Tom Walker’s mini masterpieces on YouTube really have catapulted him to fame. His conceit is that newscaster Jonathan Pie, in-between takes, tells his producer Tim what he really thinks. While primarily aimed at our political leaders, his focus is broader – taking a shot at all forms of lazy rhetoric and received opinion. All of which makes it odd that the evening started with support from Jojo Sutherland.
It can’t be easy coming on stage to a theatre full of people disappointed that the proper show hasn’t started yet, and Sutherland had a fair crack at delivering a workmanlike comedy shift. Yet, in common with so much stand-up, her routine relied on conforming, rather than defying, expectation. There were chuckles along the way, as the usual suspects of booze, fags, sex and kids were ticked off, but this was surely the antithesis of Pie’s forensic dissection of groupthink. It seems hard to imagine that Walker is averse to taking on an audience cold, and I remain perplexed that this is how he chose to open the evening. I guess it got some drinks sold at the bar during the interval, and in these straitened times, perhaps that’s reason enough.
In any event, when Jonathan Pie did appear, it was at full throttle, with an oddly disconnected attack on Matt Hancock. Like a mini warm-up for the show to come, this set out his stall, as consumed with spittle flecked fury, Pie ripped into our former Health Secretary, before settling into his faux lecture. Tom Walker has repeatedly stressed that Pie is a fictional character – a part he is playing – but it’s surely not as simple as that. Similarly rounded character routines, such as Pub Landlord or John Shuttleworth work largely because they are played against type. Al Murray isn’t a bigoted little Englander, and Graham Fellows isn’t a fifty something wannabe pop star. We laugh with, but also at (however affectionately) the characters. Pie, for all his heightened fury, speaks good sense, and does so in line with Walker’s left leaning sensibilities. The distinction between character and actor is markedly more blurred - something that seems to bother Walker far more than his audience.
It’s the only explanation I can think of for the loose narrative that ran through the evening. The big reveal comes late in the show, but we are tipped off that there has been some sort of gross indiscretion. Therefore, punctuating extraordinary bursts of literate, splenetic indignation, were passages of clunky exposition, unnecessarily justifying his appearance on stage. Perhaps they were there to give the man a break – his rants were exhausting to watch, never mind perform – but there were times where we teetered very close to Partridge territory. His videos work so well because there is a clearly delineated simplicity to them. This was Walker, overthinking things.
Once he got his stride, however, Pie proved a witty and wise commentator on the uselessness of government, the ineptitude of opposition, the vapidity of social media, and the hypocrisy of wokery. On and on he went, battering his audience with eloquent and irresistible argument, completely in command of the stage. He was funny, but mordantly so, wrapped up in anguish and despair that things had come to this. Mercilessly batting away the only heckle of the night with a word weary put down, he was brooking no argument in his one man crusade against sophistry and injustice.
There’s a huge brain at work here, but also a huge heart. Walker surely believes all this infective (it would be perverse if he did not) and by the close of the evening I couldn’t help return to the notion that Walker needs to come out of the closet. I am reminded of Michael Pennington’s excellent autobiography, where he frets over being subsumed by his alter ego, Johnny Vegas, so it’s an understandable fear. But we’re all grown-ups, and know that Frankie Boyle and Stewart Lee probably don’t talk to their mum like that. It’s an act, even though they are purportedly themselves. Audiences can handle the dichotomy. Tom Walker is howling in despair at a time when not nearly enough howling is going on. Since the tragic death of Jeremy Hardy, no one is doing this kind of thing anymore. It can be challenging, difficult stuff that leaves you pensive and thoughtful, rather than rubbing your aching ribs. But the fact that the theatre was sold out shows that there is a hunger for comedy that makes you think and feel, rather than just laugh, and to that end, Walker delivered.
There comes a time when pretending to be someone else just gets in the way.
