BY ROGER WATSON

I have almost given up on late-night comedy on BBC Radio 4. In fact, I have almost given up on the station entirely. The news is biased, and the comedy—studiously avoiding the tripwires of the woke and hypersensitive—is rarely funny.

One of my favourite programmes used to be Dead Ringers, the topical satirical impressions show fronted by Jon Culshaw. Some of the impressions were so good, I’d sometimes wonder if the person being portrayed had made a cameo appearance.

During the years of Tory rule, Dead Ringers plumbed the depths of hypocrisy in its relentlessly one-sided portrayal of anyone in government. In the early months of the current Labour government, it trod carefully—but lately, it seems to have regained some of its bite. Presumably, the manifest failings of Starmer and his crew are simply too glaring to ignore.

Yet I was reminded just how sharp the show used to be when the BBC Sounds feed added an episode from January 2000. Among the topics covered was the 1999–2000 flu epidemic, one of the worst in years, with 22,000 deaths—ten times the usual toll.

Still, Dead Ringers found comedy in the crisis. A sketch parodying Michael Buerk’s solemn reports had a reporter growing emotional as he described a man struggling downstairs to find a tissue. A woman lamented walking half a mile just to buy Lemsip, while the government did nothing to help.

The scene cut to Terry Wogan hosting a Flu Sufferers in Need appeal, with Africans fundraising for Britain’s plight. An Ethiopian woman was doing a 20-mile sponsored walk to her nearest water supply; a Somali family had “decided to go without food forever” to send us the money. Bob Geldof barked, ‘Give us your f*****g money—some of these people are sniffing, for God’s sake!’

The retelling may lack the original’s punch, but it shows Dead Ringers—and the BBC—once dared to mock our developed-world crises. The sketch contrasted our reaction to respiratory viruses (fatal mostly to the elderly and frail) with the brutal reality of life in the Horn of Africa, where thousands died daily of starvation. There, the “usual suspects” barely survived infancy, and life expectancy was pitifully short.

Some might have found the sketches callous, especially those who’d lost loved ones to flu. But if there was outrage, it went unreported. Fast-forward to 2020, and the contrast is stark.

In 2000, Dead Ringers made much of relatively little. The flu epidemic was news, but it didn’t dominate—even as a health professional, I barely recall it. Yet when COVID-19 emerged (a flu-like virus, likely no deadlier than actual flu), the broadcasting landscape had changed.

Dead Ringers took limp swipes at the ‘Scotch egg debate’ and COVID absurdities, but it never mocked the government-stoked panic. There was no effort to contextualise the fear. By then, cancel culture had peaked. Surveillance was high, media servility higher. Dissenters—questioning COVID’s severity or lockdowns—faced punitive measures.

Like the BBC, Dead Ringers is now a ghost of its former self: once a gleeful assassin of pomposity, now a cautious apologist for orthodoxy. It tiptoes around once-ripe targets, fearing the BBC’s censors and social media’s wrath. Satire, to have any value, must dare to offend—at least occasionally, and at least the right people.

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Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.