Hair combed and slicked, Mike Graham sits at his big shiny desk and waits on his cue. When his guest goes rogue backstage and starts swearing at a minion, it barely registers. He remains placid. Unruffled. It’s only his second week doing TV but Mike is in the zone. Three, two, one, zero. ‘Welcome to The Independent Republic of Mike Graham.’ He grins. ‘With you for the next three hours, of course!’
Of course. Independent Republic is a daily celebration of subversive tabloid television, beamed out on TalkTV to a dependable and swelling citizenry. Mike is the republic’s leader. During those three hours he skewers a museum for cancelling Santa, jokes about a ‘mystery eye-bleeding virus’ in France, and derides our brainless politicians.
‘Conspiracy theorists would ring in. Nutters, drug addicts, drunks. We had a whole cast of characters’
Mike has taken his brand from job to job for the last two decades, and now it’s moved to its greatest ever height: out of mid-morning and into a prime-time slot at 9 p.m.
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