Continuing the second series of MTW, we bring back John Oliver, as well as Al Murray for his second and sadly final appearance, and we introduce a rather strange case. A recurring guest that a lot of the fans don’t know how to feel about.
I’m honestly just as divisive on Gina Yashere. I first saw her on Last Comic Standing over here, she was alright. This was the season where they made it a point to include UK comics as well as US ones, and while she wouldn’t do as well in the US as Jim Tavare and Paul Foot [jesus, I can’t imagine US audiences getting Paul Foot at all], she still made something of an impression. Since 2019 she’s been a principal cast member on CBS’ Bob Hearts Abishola, which has a great concept but is squandered by CBS comedy writing. I will say that Yashere has been one of the funnier elements of it, though.
Gina Yashere’s main hook is her Nigerian upbringing. This does turn some Youtube commenters off, along with her at-times brash delivery. I’m pretty alright with it, but sometimes I can see their point. Hopefully on this watch she’ll be a bit easier on me.
Dara, on the Mark Oaten scandal: “The rentboy revealed that Oaten asked him to dress up in a replica football kit. Although he didn’t reveal if Oaten preferred two up front…and one in the hole.”
JESUS. DID FRANKIE WRITE THAT?
Dara, seeing the reaction: “ah, we’re definitely going to hell for that one”
Dara does have a great turn with his whale joke, about all the press’s names for him: “and the Express called him AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT, COMING OVER HERE…stealing all of our plankton.”
Yeah, there’s a definite improvement in his standup here
If This is the Answer…: Environment; Tired, Lost and Confused
Al: “How’s Charles Kennedy?”
of course
Gina: “How does somebody over 40 feel when they’re trying to download stuff on iTunes?”
Rory: “is it the three Dwarves that failed the audition?”
SCORE FOR RORY
John: “Is it, you’re on an adventure holiday of the wilds of the Amazonian jungles. In the morning, you ask your guide how he is. What do you NOT want to hear?”
Again…I just love John’s joke construction
Al: “I’ve no sympathy for this whale. It died…of DEHYDRATION…in a RIVER.”
Important, this is also the first appearance of Dara’s underrated whale impression.
Hugh brings up that this was the week that Ben Fogle was on the Thames: “and the whales are thinking ‘if they’re gonna take our territory…I’m going to London…to present Cash in the Attic”
Dara: “This week, on Cash in the Attic, ‘OOOIIIIUUOOOUUUHOOGGHHH’. ‘Well, yes, it was my mother’s originally..”
dear god..
Hugh: “They were thinking of using whalesong to lure them out, but the problem is, we don’t KNOW what whalesong sounds like…”
Gina: “anything by Dido will do…”
Dara: “as an emergency measure, they could have slowly moved Enya up the river…”
Frankie, behind him: “I think we should do that anyway..or let’s do a memorial for the whale by putting him in the Eastenders title sequence…”
PFFFF
Hugh: “I mean, you give a whale a name, but when some Dingo in australia eats some children…you don’t go ‘Davey the Dingo…”
I don’t know why, but man this topic is bringing the best out of everybody, especially Hugh
Dara: “Ultimately the whale got the same treatment as any NHS patient…dying on the trolley, 36 hours after first being seen”
Dara, cracking as he says it: “the next step is what to do with the body. The search is on for a toilet big enough to flush it down- I’M SORRY…”
Al: “bravo..”
Yeah, I think this is the first classic bit in MTW history. I wish John would have contributed more, but man this was bringing the best out of Hugh, Dara, Frankie, Al and even Gina. Noticeably, nary a word from Rory
Bombshell Phonecalls: Rory is Tony Blair, Frankie is Vladimir Putin
Frankie, knowing how unconvincing he’s being: “Tony…yes, it’s Vladi[…]mir Putin here…”
THE WHOLE PANEL APPLAUDS
Rory: “sorry, who?”
Frankie: “I think you know who it is, Tony, so hurry up…I can’t hold this accent forever…”
Frankie, detailing Russian surveillance: “Big Ben is a radio aerial, Alton Towers is a Russian supercomputer, and…Chris Tarrant is an android that we placed in your society…to cheapen and degrade you”
Rory, briefly shifting into Chris: “well that one worked, didn’t it?”
Frankie: “You wanna know a Russian sense of irony, Tony? Well, for many years, both of David Blunkett’s eyes were cameras.”
DEAR GOD. Man, never underestimate Frankie’s ability to throw in a Blunkett gag
Rory: “well that’s useless, you just have endless footage of…bedroom interiors”
GROANS
Frankie: “Nonsense, Russia now leads the world in Gonzo pornography”
[…does he mean the adjective or the noun there? Does Blunkett have a thing for Muppets?]
Frankie’s bombshell involves kidnapping Leo Blair and using him as an agent. “He will then be brainwashed into thinking Cheri Blair is the Joker…by showing him pictures of Cheri.”
Rory’s admission that “we’re going nuclear” gets less response, and an awkward silence, so Frankie just goes “…well, I think we’ve covered everything, Tony”, not knowing how else to end the game.
Rory: “You haven’t heard the last of this”
Frankie: “YES I HAVE” [hangs up]
Okay, that’s at least a great ending
Clumsier than previous playings, with less rapport in between Rory and Frankie, but very, very funny stuff from Frankie.
Dara, awarding points: “for his UNCANNY impersonation of the president of Transylvania…”
Stand Up Round: John, Gina, Al and Frankie
John comes up to talk about the aging population after the initial reveal of a bunch of old people in the photo gets a laugh from the audience: “Shame on you for laughing at just their faces”
John: “Last summer, I spent the holiday in Italy looking at old people, and in hindsight, I should have gone to the leaning tower of Pisa…I’d thought that Italian food was the best in the world, but as far as I could see it was just bowls of mashed up apple.”
Honestly, John’s set isn’t as good as a lot of his other ones on the show, and doesn’t have his pointed, journalistic tone.
Gina uses the topic of Blair’s reform to talk about, of course, her own Nigerian upbringing. Of how the kids in white families could talk back to their folks, but when she tried it at home, ‘I was in a coma for 6 weeks’. This is standard stuff for Gina
Al, on living with terror: “If the Americans hadn’t funded the IRA for 30 years, we wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to deal with terror…”
Al, on the Americans trying to find Bin Laden: “They’re looking for a man with a beard…in a country where you HAVE TO HAVE A BEARD..it’s a needle in a haystack, it’s a slapper in Essex, YOU KNOW SHE’S THERE…WHICH ONE IS SHE?”
Unsurprisingly, Al’s still great at this round. This is better than his last one
Frankie, on the extreme rendition flights stopping in Glasgow: “these people are being denied basic human rights, orange jumpsuits…how are we supposed to tell these flights apart from EasyJet? I mean, EasyJet probably would torture you, they’d just charge you for it as an extra..”
Frankie: “Is this really what we want to do with Islamist Fundamentalist Terrorists? Make sure they’re all on planes?”
The man is on fire
Very strong Stand Up Round, especially the second half.
Headliners: L.D.L.C.
Frankie, being himself: “…liberal democrats love cock?”
Of course, big reaction
Frankie: “to be honest, Dara, they haven’t done themselves any favors by coming on to the YMCA there..”
Frankie: “or is it the annual Liberal Democrat Linedancing Challenge?”
A rare funny clean joke from Frankie???
Rory does a truly awful one I’m not gonna repeat here.
Dara confirms that the first two letters are Lib Dems
Rory: “Lack charisma?”
Dara: “no, but you’re not a million miles off”
Al: “like crisps?”
PFFFF
Dara has to reveal the answer himself after giving 3 of the letters, “and I said that things had gone wrong. How many different ‘c words’ are there, AND DON’T GIVE ME ANY SUGGESTIONS…”
Weirdly, you’re allowed more of those…
Frankie: “I’d love to go to their party conference, it must be like Freddie Mercury’s halloween party…’MING’S FEELING HORNY, GREASE UP ANOTHER BABOON.”
Okay, I’m just gonna give him the show win now. Nobody’s gonna come close
Rory, on Mark Oaten: “when it happened, his wife was on a skiing holiday, and it’s appropriate, because she’s going down a slippery slope with a pole in each hand…”
Again, some audience groans. The audience is turning on Rory.
Dara: “How did Oaten describe the incident?”
Hugh: “Pleasurable.”
Al: “well worth 80 quid…”
Dara: “On his website, Mark Oaten says his policy on prostitution is ‘not to tolerate it, but to move it to a specified area'”. Which is…perfect. “Technically known was ’round my place'”
Another very strong conversational round. Some of the jokes did verge on homophobic, but the ones that worked, really worked.
Ask the Politicians: Rory is David Blunkett, Hugh is a spokesman for the Tories, AL IS ONCE AGAIN THE VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY YAAAAY, Gina’s a South London councilor, other 2 are audience members
YES THEY BROUGHT THIS BACK FOR AL. HOORAY.
Rory’s Blunkett, on Bird Flu, gets great response almost immediately: ‘right, I caught, uh, flu from an American bird once…”
…folks…if you don’t know what’s coming by now…
Rory: “It’s like the whale, I think we’ve turned into a soft touch for all mammals and avian creatures…I think they come here expected to be treated on the NHM, the Natural History Museum…”
Al fits right back into his character, adding “who think people who wanna work with children should be strung up JUST IN CASE…”
Al: “It’s like foot-in-mouth, we had to kill those sheep and cows, so that they didn’t die…”
Yeah, he’s still really good at this
Gina: “this disease must not be THAT hard to spot, you must be pretty stupid to let a chicken cough on you…”
John has a question about whether a person’s private life should affect their reputation in politics. Dara hands it to Rory
Gina: “DIRTY BASTARD.”
Dara, perfectly: “PLEASE, let the man speak, THEN call him a dirty bastard…”
Rory: “Since I became a minister, you don’t know the totty I’ve achieved…so I’m, uh, I’m relieved.”
Gina: “But what you don’t know is that you’ve been sleeping with a moose.”
Gina is better in this game than she has been all night, honestly. Though, to be fair, she’s had a lot more strong moments than most people give her credit for. She just sticks to her laurels, and most of the time her laurels involve her Nigerian upbringing
Dara, to Hugh: “Speaking as a member of the conservatives, as an MP yourself, are you DROWNING in punani at the moment?”
JESUS
THEY EVEN CATCH A SHOT OF JOHN LAUGHING AT THIS
Gina: “Politicians should not even be having sex. When you’re married, all that stuff is supposed to stop.”
Why am I seeing this as an early version of her character from Bob Hearts Abishola?
Dara, very weakly: “…okay…”
PFFF
John asks the panelists’ modern day heroes
Hugh, perfectly: “Well, I’m from the new caring, considerate conservative party, so…Pol Pot”
I love that read
Gina, barely being provoked: “TRISHA.”
Hugh gets a chuckle out of this. Oh, 2006…
Al has a whole rant about how Horatio Nelson still kept fighting after losing an arm and an eye. This is funny, but maybe not as funny as his first go
Hugh, on Rory’s eyes: “Can I just say that you are looking remarkably like Benny Hill?”
Rory smirks and does the salute
Another strong round of this. Good work by everyone, with surprising quality from Gina, and some more great working-class ranting from Al.
Scenes We’d Like to See:
“Cliffhanger Lines from a Political Soap Opera” is a funny, WL-esque suggestion
Frankie: “I’m John F. Kennedy, I’ve been in the shower, did I miss anything?”
PFFFF
Frankie: “The irony won’t be lost on you, President Schwarzenegger. I’m from the future, and I’m here to stop YOU from destroying the world.”
Perfect
Hugh: “We’ve had drunkards, we’ve had rentboys, what have you done? Shagged a goat addicted to heroin?”
SO GOOD. Also, he’s not far off considering what’d be a big story 12 seasons later…
“Things George Galloway would never say”
Frankie: “No comment.”
Gina, who must have seen last week’s show: “I can’t wear that, that looks STUPID..”
Frankie: “I’m very famous in the Muslim world…FOR BEING AN ARSE.”
[This…should have been in last week’s]
“Words You’d Never Hear from a Newsreader”
Gina: [nearly trips getting back to the step]
People: [don’t respond to this for some reason]
Oh, I see, it’s funny when Angela does it…
Al, with his only SWLTS suggestion of the night: “Too revolting to describe…..but let’s have a go anyway…”
Gina: “The two youths convicted this morning…GOT WHAT THEY FUCKIN DESERVED.”
John, cracking: “You’ve been watching Sky News, to be honest, I’d double-check everything you’ve just heard..”
Frankie, with what was, on previous watches of the show, my first ‘OMG laugh of the series: “In this next report, Gerry Adams is voiced by an actor….SAMUEL L. JACKSON. “I’LL TELL YOU ABOUT THE PRIEST PROCESS, MOTHERFUCKER…”
GONE. ABSOLUTELY GONE. And he even knows how silly it is.
A much better SWLTS than recent ones, in that there was only 1 weak, quick one, and the other two were hysterical. Gina, again, got some good stuff in there, while Rory’s were met with low reactions.
Overall: I had to really go back and forth about whether this one was stronger than Episode 1. And in the end…it’s not. This is a great show, with some excellent high points, like the whale conversation, Al v. Frankie on terrorism, and that Samuel L. Jackson joke, but…there was less consistency than last show, I think. There’s also the fact that the big story of the week led people, including Rory, to go for some homophobic jokes, cause this was 2005. And some rounds, like Bombshell Phone Calls, were just hampered by not working as well as previous. There’s still a lot that works about this show, including a tour de force from Frankie, some great work from Al and Gina, and some of the most advanced collaborative conversation rounds yet. But I just have some nagging issues about it that keep me from saying it’s better than E1.
Best Regular: Frankie, and I gave him this in the middle of Headliners.
Best Guest: Al Murray, for being a bit more prevalent than Gina. I am gonna miss him.
Worst Performer: On one hand, John had a much quieter, weaker show than usual, but on the other, Rory’s stuff got under my skin a bit tonight, so I’m going with Rory.
Best Round: If This is the Answer, because whale things. I was really won over.
Best Topic: The whale.
Best Runner: Frankie’s accent
COMING UP NEXT: Two more trusted recurring performers, and a panel stalwart willing to give this show a go.
In which Jordan writes about stuff 