Friday 11 May 2007

Bye bye Blair


In celebration of Tony Blair's 10 years as Prime Minister of Britain, here's a excerpt from a Guardian commentator about him, and two videos.

Getting a laugh out of this prime minister has been like trying to open an oyster with a plastic fork

Simon Hoggart
Thursday May 10, 2007
The Guardian

... When a new political figure comes on the scene, sketchwriters and cartoonists have the same job. We need to find the key elements, of physical appearance and speech, then exaggerate them to that they become familiar to readers and can be used as a helpful shorthand for drawings and articles. Steve Bell spotted the Blair eyeball, the one mad staring optic, which he seemed to have inherited from Thatcher. The bonkers eye complements the sane one, which roves around the room in a friendly way; meanwhile the angry one is taking names. Alarmingly, the eyes change places; sometimes it's the right which comes at you like a dentist's drill, sometimes the left.

I noticed first the verb-free sentences, which he still uses today: "Our people, prosperous and secure. Our children, meeting the challenge ..." These are sentences without real content, expressing vague aspirations rather than real commitments. He might use up to 200 in one speech, making it sound like oratorical Muzak, conveying little but a sense of wellbeing.
... Click HERE for full article

Tony Blair's sketch with Catherine Tate for Comic Relief 2007:



A spoof of a Bush-Blair press conference by Dead Ringers: