"and they were singing, 'Bye, Bye, Mr Jonathan Pie...'

Guest blog from the incomparable @[email protected]
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Wokery, 1984 and the death spiral of British comedy..

Yesterday, I had a brief spat on X with Tom Walker, better known for his character "Jonathan Pie." His stand-up is basically a piss-take of people who take the piss out of the "woke."

Desperate to claw back the word they once wore proudly, they seem entirely incapable of seeing that they’re now the joke. The "woke" are the 2024 human embodiment of every joke since The Goons and Monty Python about the perpetually offended, virtue-signalling left. We just have a new word for them, but they’re the same arseholes.

In early 1936, Orwell immersed himself in the living conditions of the working class in Northern England, particularly in Lancashire and Yorkshire. He stayed in various lodging houses, including one above a tripe shop in Wigan, to closely observe and document the daily lives of miners and their families. This first hand experience formed the basis for the first part of his book, providing a vivid account of the hardships faced by the working class during that era. It’s an extraordinary book, and one many people overlook when they think of him—it could have been written today. Orwell critiques the socialist movement of his time, expressing concern that its advocates often alienate the general public. 

He describes a stereotypical image of socialists as: "Every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England," lecturing the poor, hardworking miners and their families for not eating more Ryvita and orange juice. "The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots."

He knew and pointed out then that the socialist movement was a massive embarrassment, made up of a small, but, very vocal group of people who didn’t fit into a class—the “middle class.” Not quite rich enough to have any standing in society, not poor enough to get any sympathy. It was always thus. 

The middle class don’t seem to understand why we scrotes and the wealthy get on. Historically, the rich create and provide us work and jobs, and they generally leave us the fuck alone. Should they have to mix with us, they’re usually more aligned with us and our humour and moral compass. And we do the shit stuff for them that they need doing, and we usually just get on with it. The middle class have no connection to anything. They all have a massive superiority complex. They’ve left their family homes, towns, and people, fucked off to university, and have little connection to anyone or anything anymore—unlike the rich and the poor, who could live generations in the same place, know everyone and everything, and still call the shop that closed down 50 years ago “The Old Woolworths,” and everyone knows where they mean.

It's no surprise after that experience that ten years later, Orwell wrote 1984. Sadly, as many have said before me, instead of this prophetic book becoming a warning, it’s instead become the modern-day left’s instruction manual. I suggest it should be reprinted and named A Modern Person’s Guide to Being an Unbearable Woke Wanker. 

So, what is “woke”?
They like to think it’s somehow a badge of honour and pride. Being “woke,” they feel, gives them, to quote Blur, "a sense of enormous well-being."

They feel massively superior, and they all think they’re the cleverest people in the room. In 1936, however, their numbers were small. Access to university education in the United Kingdom was limited to a small segment of the population. Only about 11,000 people attended university annually. Whilst they were loud, obnoxious, and rowdy, they were few and could be ignored. By 1996, the Age Participation Index (API), which measures the proportion of young people entering higher education for the first time by age 21, noted that around 33.1% of the UK population were going to university—around 835,000 people per year. 

At first, this move upwards, out of the working class to aspiring middle class and academia, was celebrated. Our best comedians all met at university: Monty Python, The Goodies, Beyond the Fringe, The League of Gentlemen, Mitchell and Webb, and The Mighty Boosh were all created at places like Cambridge’s Footlights Club. Were it not for university, there would have been no Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, or Alan Bennett. No Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, or Terry Jones. The list is endless. 

But all these people still had one foot firmly in the working-class camp. They could balance their connection to the majority of people who were working-class and those who were becoming more liberal-curious, moving away from traditional Christian Britain and towards more humanistic pursuits and attitudes. At the time, it was all pretty balanced, and everyone could coexist. It wasn’t unusual for a family to sit down together and watch Jim Davidson and Only Fools and Horses, and then switch over to Victoria Wood, The Mighty Boosh, or Spaced. Comedy wasn’t owned by anyone, and everyone was welcome to enjoy it.

I myself was a massive raging lefty. Having grown up with an Irish Catholic mum and a Cornish Christian dad, who was ex-forces, my rebellion was to pull away from anything remotely attached to it. The ’90s saw a massive explosion of this. Music was great, TV and film were great, the world felt great, and nobody cared about skin colour or sexual leanings. It wasn’t talked about. I dressed like Neneh Cherry, had a perm and a bomber jacket, and my Hi-Tec high tops, and I’d Buffalo Stance myself into a frenzy. “Cultural appropriation” didn’t exist. ...But this was in the old days when only men had a penis.

BBC Radio 4 was epic for new comedy. We’d moved on from Hancock’s Half Hour and The Goon Show and were experiencing things like Little Britain, The Boosh, and The Now Show. Everyone could take the piss out of everyone equally.

By the late ’90s and early 2000s, though, the woke was growing. Although it wasn’t called that then, people started to notice. Clare in the Community first aired on BBC Radio 4 on 26 November 2004, and it was fucking hilarious. By this time, I was working and started to see my language and the language of others being policed. Every industry became obsessed with “stats” and running training courses on appropriate behaviour in the workplace.

I hadn’t gone to university because I, like a lot of working-class school leavers in the mid-’90s, slipped through many gaps. Both my parents worked, so I wasn’t poor enough to get a grant, but they were too poor to pay for me to go. While I stayed home for four years, working my arse off all week and getting hammered all weekend, all my mates went off to university and came back calling “Preemark” “Primos,” “Sainsbury’s” “Saino’s,” and they’d developed use of their “t’s” and started lecturing me about the things I said and did.

Already insecure because they’d gone to university and I hadn’t, I immediately fell into line and hopped on board the progressive train.
To prove it, I made sure I, too, checked people’s wrong-think and lectured them about anything they’d said that could be vaguely misconstrued as racist, misogynistic, or homophobic. (We didn’t have trannies then—they were still just plain old perverts in those days.)

If you’ve never listened to Clare in the Community, I strongly suggest you do. It’s probably more relevant now than it ever was. Clare is an upper-middle-class socialist who becomes a social worker in one of the shittest, poorest, most culturally diverse, crime-ridden areas of London. She spends every episode lecturing her colleagues and downtrodden beta male husband about their fruity opinions, self-identifying into what she thinks a working-class person is, whilst employing an Eastern European maid and nanny, and having one son she refuses to allow to play with anything that enforces his gender role. As such, she’s forever tying herself up in knots—because, of course, they all do.
And this is what leads me back to modern-day woke people like Jonathan Pie.

The percentage of young people attending university is now on a massive decline. The ship has sailed, the shop has shut, everyone has gone home, yet the woke are still battling on with their agenda. Instead of realising nobody finds them funny or interesting and reflecting on why that is, they’re all choosing to “blame” the audience for being thick, racist, bigots, or fascists. Which is just even funnier.

Over the past decade, British television comedy has experienced a notable decline in both production and viewership. The BBC’s original comedy programming decreased by over 40% from 2010 to 2019, dropping from 225 hours to 132 hours.

In a 2022 interview on Rob Brydon’s podcast, Stewart Lee described Ricky Gervais’s After Life as "one of the worst things that's ever been made by a human." In a 2024 interview promoting his show Basic Lee, Lee elaborated further, suggesting that Gervais appears as a "frightened man" who uses stand-up comedy as a "defensive wall."

However, Ricky Gervais’s international popularity is evidenced by the global adaptations of his work, successful international tours, high-profile hosting engagements, and widespread critical acclaim. His ability to connect with diverse audiences underscores his status as a prominent figure in global entertainment.

He’s a working-class boy done good, and what people love about him more than anything is that he doesn’t give a fuck what you think. He doesn’t care if he offends anyone. They’d love to cancel him, but they can’t. Sadly, they seem to have been able to cancel Peter Kay. While the British people love his politically neutral comedy, he’s clearly been deemed too white and British for the woke overlords in the British media machine.

The sad thing about Pie’s character is that, if he dropped the woke shit, had a really good think, and took on board the thousands of people in his comments saying, “I used to think you were funny,” he could be funny again. He's clearly talented. And I don't think he's a bad bloke, I think he means well - just perhaps a bit of a coward? I can't imagine it's hard to break ranks from the establishment - look what they did to @Glinner?

The Jonathan Pie character still has legs—they’re just in a woke plaster cast. Being proud to be woke now just means you’re someone with no moral compass or values, you can’t think for yourself, and you’re pro-establishment.There’s nothing rebellious, interesting, or controversial about that. It’s more controversial now to be a conservative, Christian, anti-government person who genuinely sees everyone as equals—for good or bad.

This catastrophiocally ienpt and dishonest Labour government is overflowing with material for piss-takes. Pie could create a "Department of Contradictions" headed up by Diane Abbott, where they decide what the rules of #wrongspeak
are. For example:
 
“Safety for women from men… unless the man is wearing a bra, then punch a TERF” or: “Down with the patriarchy, unless it’s a Muslim man forcing his wife to stay at home, have babies, not work or drive, marry a cousin she’s never met, and have no access to money—because women’s rights, unless it’s cultural… yeah? Yeah? Am I right??”

It's the epitome of 1984, and none of them can see it.
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them…"

From 1984: "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," and "Ignorance is Strength." In 2024: "Queers for Palestine," "Transwomen are Women," and "Be Kind."
SAME PEOPLE
Try challenging any of them on it, and it’s clear they can’t defend their positions. All they have is, “You’re a moron,” or, “You can’t spell.” (I know—I’m severely dyslexic… but “be kind,” yeah?)

We only have to look at the Trump win recently to realise wokery has had its day. It’s done. Comedians like Pie remind me of a book I read a few years ago about a lad called Teruo Nakamura. He was a “holdout” found in 1974, living alone in the jungles of Morotai, Indonesia, for 30 years with no idea the war had ended. 

Come over to the dark side Mr Pie - the water is warm and we still laugh xx