JONATHAN PIE

From viral sensation to fully-fledged touring act, Jonathan Pie – actor and comedian Tom Walker – now embarks on The Fake News Tour. “We all say ‘fake news’ when we don’t like the story,” he tells Carl Marsh.

 

Tim, the fictional guy in your earpiece during your reports, reminds me of Big Brother from George Orwell’s 1984; would you say that Jonathan Pie is a bit like Winston Smith, albeit one with a bigger audience?

I’d never thought of it like that but yeah, maybe – as this producer is the antagonist of the story, isn’t he? He is the antithesis of [Jonathan] Pie, and he is a blue-blood, privately-educated privileged Tory, that is the way that I have always seen Tim. And Pie is the opposite of that.  

 

Would you say that Jonathan is the news reporter that we all wish we saw as he attacks the mainstream media for patronising the audience?

I think he is – as that is the conceit behind him; he is the news reporter that tells you what he thinks. He is a satire of the media, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I am one of these conspiracy theorists that believe there is some underground agenda from the media. If you buy into this idea that the mainstream media is all fake and with an agenda, then you are buying into Donald Trump’s analysis, which is a dangerous narrative. I think, and I hope, that I satirise the media, but I am not sure that I personally am as anti-media as the satire itself suggests.

 

Your new set of dates is called The Fake News Tour – can we expect an amalgamation of all the things that Trump has said?

What is bizarre is that now I am writing it, there is very little about Trump in there. What I want to talk about with fake news is that we all now live in a world where news outlets announce the news on Twitter before they announce it on the TV or in the papers. Twitter is a forum which is there to express opinions, and we are just of an age where opinion and fact are so close together. So we only really take on board the news that we agree with; we only read the papers that we agree with. We only follow on social media the news outlets that we agree with, and we decide what facts we agree with, and which facts we don’t. If a fact offends our sensibility, we don’t listen to it. I think that is a dangerous state of affairs because I believe we are all guilty of accusing the news of being fake when we don’t like the story.

 

Personal interpretation can be a dangerous thing: what can offend one person might not the other.

Absolutely, as I talk a lot in the new show about comedy and offence. I talked a lot about it in the last show as well, as comedy and offence are closely linked because what one person finds funny, the next person won’t. And what one person finds offensive, the next person won’t. It’s subjective.

 

One of your YouTube videos Oppression Obsession mentions that old books are now being considered as racist, even though they were written at a time when they were not classed as being such. Do you think people are offended these days by everything?

Yeah, I think people have forgotten the context and intent. If you are reading something that was written 100 years ago, then you have to take into account ‘the context’. We have forgotten that art. We go trawling through people’s social media and people’s pasts to find something where they have transgressed by today’s standards.

You can’t deny that the world’s economy used to be based on slavery. And by that, it was considered fiscally acceptable to make your fortune by dealing with human beings. That is no longer the case; you can’t go back and change that history. You have to acknowledge that history. And I wonder how future generations will view us and what we are doing to the planet, and whether they’ll look back and they’ll want to desecrate our statues because of different moral standards we have, generation on generation.

 

Jonathan Pie, St David’s Hall, Sat 23 Nov. Tickets: £27/£20 (sold out, check for returns). Info: 029 2087 8444 / www.stdavidshall.co.uk