Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Little Britain’s Brexit special was hardly comedy gold

Little Britain is a sketch-show whose cast of grotesque characters give audiences permission to laugh at obesity, disability, cross-dressing and a host of other human frailties. The creators Matt Lucas and David Walliams on Thursday night delivered a one-off special about Brexit for Radio 4.

‘Little Brexit’ opened with the show’s narrator, Tom Baker, using irony like a blunt weapon. ‘Brexit has united the country as never before.’ Some jokes – like the quip about our economy receiving a boost from scared shoppers stockpiling food – felt pretty ancient. Ditto Matt Lucas’s brief cameo as Boris explaining how he reached Number 10.

‘We asked a handful of men who live in Tunbridge Wells who should be prime minister, and they said me.’

One of the best-loved characters, Vicky Pollard, is an idiot-savant from Bristol whose garrulous soliloquies are mired in contradictory indecisiveness.

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