The Debate: Is Count Binface funny?
You won’t catch our comment editor cracking a smile at the intergalactic space warrior, but is Count Binface entirely unfunny? We hear the case for and against in this week’s Debate
YES: Like the works of Monty Python, it is funny because it is silly not in spite of it
I get that some people – po-faced political puritans, the irony impaired, thick people – won’t and don’t get the joke. He’s not side-splittingly, rip-roaringly funny. I probably wouldn’t book tickets for a national tour if he did one. But he is certainly funnier than most by-election candidates. And, of course, Count Binface does not exist purely to provide comic relief. He serves an essential democratic function as well.
I find his humour is about context. His recent appearance on Newsnight made me chuckle and his music video (set to the tune of the Divine Comedy’s ‘National Express’) put a wide grin on my face. That The Spectator chose him to write its review of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey made me guffaw outrageously. It is all about the juxtaposition of the pompous and the preposterous. And, as there are few politicians more pompous than Nigel Farage, it is only appropriate that his nemesis is equally preposterous. Like the works of Monty Python, it is funny because it is silly not in spite of it. And there is something wonderfully, quixotically British about that.
Of course, you don’t have to actually get the joke to enjoy him, appreciate his contribution to national life, or wish him well in Clacton. Surely, we can all agree that if, when we wake on Friday morning, he has defeated Nigel Farage in one of the safest seats in the country then it will make millions of people smile.
James Ford is a former adviser to Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who twice stood against Count Binface
NO: Binface’s antics are the least funny thing about the Clacton by-election circus
It’s quite an achievement to be less funny than Rachel Reeves, but Count Binface has managed it. Her quip that Nigel Farage was “spending his summer arguing with a bin” is the best joke that’s been told about the Clacton by-election – skewering both Nigel Farage’s pointless theatrics and the bin’s tedious act.
Binface is gaining attention because of the absurdity of the Reform leader inviting the people of Clacton to “stick two fingers up to the establishment” by re-electing their incumbent MP. The comic set-up was provided by the other major parties withdrawing, leaving this ‘independent space warrior’ as Farage’s main opponent. But this character is neither new, nor original. Lord Sutch, founder of the Monster Raving Looney Party, stood as a ‘novelty’ candidate in 39 elections between 1983 and 1999, losing his deposit in every one. Blackadder invented the ‘Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid Party’. A ‘Lord Buckethead’ stood against Margaret Thatcher in 1987.
So this ‘joke’ was already hackneyed when Jonathan David Harvey started prancing about with a bin on his head in 2017. This man has a degree from Oxford and a family but, astonishingly, nothing better to do with his time. His ‘manifesto’ consists of paper thin satirical policies like “I will cut your taxes and raise everyone else’s” – even Banksy can do better than that.
If anything, Binface’s antics are the least funny thing about the Clacton by-election circus. Like the receptacle he’s named after, they’re hollow, reeking and should be sent to the dump.
Alys Denby is Morning Wire’s comment and features editor
THE VERDICT
To define what is funny is near impossible. Humour, of course – as our debaters make clear – is by and large subjective; what is funny to Mr Ford is tiresome to Ms Denby. Nonetheless, we proceed: is Count Binface, intergalactic space warrior and Britain’s best known satirical political candidate, a work of comedy genius or just plain trashy?
Mr Ford, in his argument for the former, makes an unexpected case for the subtlety of the Count’s comedy. This Morning Wire cannot warrant. There is of course nothing understated, and indeed little clever, about a man whose bit is that he has a bin for a head. That being said, however, neither can Morning Wire fully endorse Ms Denby’s position that there is nothing funny about a man whose bit is that he has a bin for a head.
Is the joke a little laboured by now? Well, yes. But tomorrow, after an earnest bid to position himself as the star in a grandiose battle between the people and the establishment, Nigel Farage will instead go head to head with a bin. And you can’t say that’s not funny.