Matt Forde: Dishonorable Member

Given the backdrop of budget cuts, a Tory-led government and, more recently— riots on the street—it’s no great surprise that political comedy is back on the agenda in 2011. But where comics like Mark Thomas and Josie Long vent spleen at the system, for Matt Forde politics is a lot like football: you pick your side early and cheer them faithfully on come what may.

A one-time apparatchik in Labour’s Nottingham office, there is only one party in Forde’s affections. There is only one man, too. "I got the same feeling watching Tony Blair as I got watching Saved by the Bell. All warm and fuzzy and happy," he swoons. No wonder that inane anthem ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ is the show’s intro music.

At its heart, New Labour’s was a rather vacuous, technocratic vision that traded style for substance. The same, unfortunately, could be said of Forde: he’s a very likeable guy, with an infectious giggle and an easy onstage manner, but his political insight boils down to hagiographic tales of Blair and Mandelson at party conference and compendiums of the best New Labour one-liners–which almost certainly worked better at the dispatch box than inside a Fringe sweatbox.

The best material is political with a small p–tales of growing up in Nottingham, meeting Brian Clough and sexual encounters dressed as Alan Partridge. Forde has comic talent but would do well to wake from his late '90s champagne socialism stupor and engage a bit more with the world as it is today.