Have I Got Ruins For You (III. Smugness & Insincerity)

(Note: this is one instalment of a multi-part essay.)

In 2023, an episode of Have I Got News For You was hosted by the actor David Tennant, once again an extraordinarily popular figure in Britain having returned to the helm of Doctor Who. His performance was well-received. Twitter lit up with praise.

Yet, the clips that were shared illustrate why I believe that, if HIGNFY isn’t less popular than it was, it deserves to be.

Take this one as an example. They laugh at a cheap insult made by a Just Stop Oil activist, Sean Irish, to arch High Tory politician Jacob Rees-Mogg. HIGNFY did not show any other clips from their interaction, which is interesting because Rees-Mogg easily bested Irish at every turn. The cheap insult which Irish got in at the beginning was his only “win” in the entire 8-minute interview, which otherwise was a disaster for him and made him look like a petulant, silly, delusional, child. Yet HIGNFY chose that clip to represent the interview, so as to make Rees-Mogg look a fool.

Rees-Mogg has actually appeared on HIGNFY, several times, so it is not a personal vindictive attack on him. It is more insidious than that: it is an attack on the type of person he is, which is the exact type that HIGNFY has always railed against: the wealthy, traditional conservative.

Elsewhere in the same episode, more such antics, this time against Rishi Sunak. And here we get to another aspect of HIGNFY’s decline: the glaring hypocrisy. Sunak’s prestigious private school is mentioned. Ian Hislop’s private school is not mentioned, even though it is just as prestigious. Neither is the private school to which he sent his son, which again is just as prestigious. The host David Tennant sent his son to another private school. One of that episode’s two guests, Richard Osman, also sent his two children to private school. Yet they mock Rishi Sunak for having gone to private school…? The hypocrisy just never ends. (Paul Merton doesn’t have any children but one can bet that, if he did, he would have sent them to private school. The other contestant, Lucy Beaumont, has a child and at least looked into private schools.)

Within the same episode is the aspect of HIGNFY’s decline that I mentioned earlier: going along with consensus lies. This involves pretending to believe that which everyone knows is untrue, and not examining that which it is forbidden to examine. This applies to a huge range of topics, because our society is now awash with lies, even dependent on them to maintain its stability. In theory, satire and comedy should highlight exactly such lies. Instead, HIGNFY reinforces them, and attacks people who question them.