Chris Morris is not funny

I watched the South Bank tribute to Armando Ianucci last night. The man is funny and talented (with a heavy hint of smug self-satisfaction) and The Thick Of It is about the only telly I've attempted not to miss recently (Six Nations and Test matches excluded, natch), however...he made some claim that it wasn't funny when you could see comics being comics, which was why they had gone for realism in The Day Today. But the Day Today wasn't realistic, wasn't funny and attempted to parody something beyond parody (24 hour rolling news channels have enough trouble looking real as it is). Now I realise this sort of opinion can get you a fatwa, and I am already anticipating the death threats from ces bourgeois de merde* who revere the man (you know who you are) and will be outside my house with their placards and state of the art suicide bomber chic but The Day Today never did anything for me. As for that bloke with the flared nostrils, he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a TV screen, and even Patrick Marber (an acclaimed playwrite so they say) reflects the worst of Ianucci when he performs, his only character being sneering, supercilious and, yes, unfunny.
Then there were the over frequent cutaways of Melvyn Bargg (still taking the Labour whip, as far as I can tell) nodding sagely, liver spot to the fore, eyes narrowed knowingly yet inquisitively...give me strength. And I say this as a man who has the In Our Time homepage bookmarked. Still, it was good to learn that the swearing in The Thick Of It is done by a specialist. The scripts are sent to a man up north (whose name I sadly forget) who adds top notch creative abuse. I doff my expletive enhanced hat to him.

*Merci a Bernard Laporte