In General Election year it is more important than ever to have comedians engaging with politics. There are plenty who drop a soupcon of satire into their shows, but not many who deliver an hour of solid humour about the people who either are governing the country or want to govern the country.
This is precisely what Forde delivers. And he does it in a very conventional way. He’s not angry like Mark Thomas, he’s not your furious preacher like Bill Hicks. He’s simply chatty and well-informed. One would expect the latter from a former political advisor to the Labour Party – I assume that’s true, though his Wikipedia page also says that he started his career playing Bungle in the popular children's TV show, Rainbow.
Forde’s brand of satire is pretty mainstream. If anything he is the natural heir to Rory Bremner. He peppers his show 24 Political Party People with impressions of all the major leaders. They are consistently pretty good and his Boris Johnson is even better. Though I think Bojo can probably be done by everyone, much in the way everyone used to be able to do John Major.
As for the material Forde is a cross-party critic, hammering away at Cameron, Clegg and Miliband. He also has an inevitable pop at UKIP – “like Oasis they sound great but the lyrics are shit” – although he admits to having a soft spot for Farage, suggesting that he is the best orator of all of them.
The most interesting part of the show is not when Forde is dissecting policies, however, but – perhaps understandably in this age of image – when he dissects the party leaders' style of delivery and their feeble attempts at using social media, pointing out weird hand gestures and tics that stick out a mile once one has been alerted to them.
Some of the material is not quite as cutting edge. Satire needs to be topical to really hit home and his routine about MP Emily Thornberry’s White Van Man Tweet, for instance, already feels old. Likewise his riff about the UKIP member blaming the floods on gay marriage. There is also an underlying problem that Forde is a bit of a Blair apologist. He unashamedly calls himself a “Blair Centrist” and, while it is good that he puts his cards on the table, it does mean that the former Labour leader gets off pretty lightly when mentioned.
While the facts keep everyone informed it’s the impressions that keep everyone entertained. And not just the political ones. The audience noticeably perked up when he did Russell Brand or Michael McIntyre, imagining the floppy-fringed stand-up in the House of Commons.
Taking a pop at politics these days is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s difficult not to get a laugh and Forde gets plenty of them in this show. He is hardly revolutionary – more Bremner than Brand – but it is oddly refreshing to see a comedian tackling a subject that affects all of us at length.
Matt Forde is at the Soho Theatre until Feb 21 then touring. Details here.
