Coronavirus - Impact on live/recorded shows

True enough. And as I mentioned earlier in the thread, there was lots of comedy around during World War II, and It's That Man Again was a hugely popular programme, and that was topical and made numerous jokes about the news, and everyone loved it and nobody found it offensive. Even The Beano and The Dandy used to do comic strips making fun of Hitler.

As I said, if you can do comedy during the Blitz, you can do it now.

And increasingly they rely a lot - sometimes too much - on funny 'viral' clips and they haven't dried up despite the actual virus circulating

And there is other news happening, you have to look for it but it does exist

Yeah, Dandy had a strip called Addie and Hermy, where Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering are trying to conquer their own hunger, rather than Hungary. They also regularly had Desperate Dan fight the Nazis, the Beano using Lord Snooty and Pansy Potter for the same purpose (there was also a strip called Musso the Wop, about Mussolini - it ended earlier than Addie and Hermy due to Italy's surrender). Even cover star funny animals Korky the Cat and Big Eggo got stuck in.



Currently, Beano is operating on business as usual, but I won't be surprised if they do anything virus related in a month or two (probably in the form of a PSA page - they have a character who appears every so often called Mandi for this purpose, she's usually used for topics like bullying and mobile phone usage). Dandy now only has a summer special and an annual.

I'm not sure 'making fun of Hitler' is comparable. Who is the Hitler equivalent in this story?

some details of the tone that HIGNFY are aiming for: https://inews.co.uk/culture/have-i-got-news-for-you-new-series-bbc-one-coronavirus-lockdown-video-conference-2525476

When ex-MI5 agent David Shayler appeared as a HIGNFY panellist via satellite in 2000, Paul Merton hated it because of how it threw all sense of comedy timing out the window. So it will be interesting to see how he copes with it.

The general point is that they were making jokes about World War II which was clearly a very unpleasant and frightening scenario, and no doubt many children's parents died or were badly injured, and families were separated for a long time. But it was still considered important to find humour in the situation.

This is all in response to the suggestion that jokes about the government are going to fall flat. As mentioned, you only have to look at the front pages of today's papers or on social media during the press conferences to find that there is plenty of criticism of the government.

Feels like Merton should have left several series back. Maybe this will be the push he needs.

Or it could reinvigorate him.

‘Have I Got News From You’.....social distancing style.

Tomorrow night 9pm @BBCOne

Hosting it from my kitchen..... #StayAtHome pic.twitter.com/YJuN9rJ9fp

— Steph McGovern (@StephLunch) April 2, 2020

Odd placement - I'd have thought Paul should be on the right hand side of the screen.

I feel like this will be a good example of just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should. Hope to be proven wrong though.