A special episode of classic radio comedy panel game “I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue” was aired last night, featuring a very unusual guest performer – Theresa May.
The Prime Minister (or possibly ex-Prime Minister, if you’re listening to the Sunday repeat) appeared alongside regular panellist Tim Brooke-Taylor, opposite Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden, with Jack Dee in the chair.
Things got off to a shaky start when Mrs May began by doing the welcome announcement, and Jack Dee had to cut her off.
It turned out that she hadn’t read the details of the booking, and believed herself to be the chair, in what has to be the funniest conceptual misunderstanding by a guest on a comedy panel game since Stan Boardman appeared on “Act Your Age” a decade previously.
Jack Dee then did his opening preamble with the usual jokes about the location they were recording from, and then introduced the teams, adding, “Theresa was originally scheduled to appear on Just A Minute, until it was explained that to do well at that game you have to talk without hesitation, deviation or repetition. So she ended up on this show instead. Oh well, their gain is our loss.”
In the first round, Uxbridge English Dictionary, which brings funny new definitions to existing words (such as Stephen Fry’s memorable one, “countryside – to kill Piers Morgan”), she started off proceedings by saying “Brexit – Brexit” – which was met with a stony silence. It was only when Tim Brooke-Taylor jumped in and said, “Omnishambles – Brexit” that the audience started laughing.
In the round called One Song To The Tune Of Another, Jack explained the simple concept with the usual complex analogy, but it was Mrs May who stared at him blankly and kept asking him to explain in more detail, until eventually Jack suggested she listen to the other panellists doing it.
At this point Mrs May asked what he meant by her listening to other people.
In the end, after hearing Barry Cryer singing the word of the theme from Cheers to the tune of House Of The Rising Sun, Graeme Garden singing YMCA to the tune of Batman, and Tim-Brooke Taylor singing the words of Hanky-Panky to the tune of Jerusalem, she eventually sang There’ll Always Be An England to the tune of There’ll Always Be An England, and was disqualified.
The next round, Sound Charades, caused yet more problems when she thought they were playing actual silent charades, and so was miming on the radio.
Tim ended up doing a running commentary of her gestures as Barry and Graeme struggled to guess. In the end they couldn’t identify Great Expectations, which she mimed by just looking smug.
She completely failed to guess the other team’s easy spoken charade of Home Alone, where using their Hamish & Dougal personas, Barry and Graeme talked about “child gangster Bugsy has changed his first name to a piece of gardening equipment”. Fortunately Tim got it in time.
In the round called Mornington Crescent, where players basically do moves between various locations in London, they took advantage of the EU Health & Safety protocols to play the Brussels-approved version.
Mrs May stuck to saying 10 Downing Street, Westminster and Chequers, and incurred several penalties for employing the wrong diagonal as per the EU protocols. Mrs May protested that they don’t need any health & safety protocols from the EU, but that didn’t stop her losing the game as Graeme Garden triumphantly called out “Mornington Crescent” after her final call of Downing Street.
Then came word for word, in which teams exchanged words with no connection. Tim and Theresa actually did well on this one, mainly thanks to Tim’s countering Theresa’s offerings of “strong” with “stable” and “honest” with “conservative”. At no point could Barry or Graeme make any claim of connection between any two adjacent words, so Tim and Theresa took the whole round.
The show typically ends with a round of themed song, book or film titles, and this week they did “Naughty Songbook”. Mrs May’s only offerings was “Fields Of Wheat”, and she looked completely blank when Barry asked her, if that was by Rees Moggy Mogg.
And that was it. As Jack said the farewells, he added a special apology:
“To everyone in the audience here and all those listening at home, we’re sorry, she hasn’t a clue.”