Eleanor Tiernan: 'Comedy has played a part in the trouble that has befallen the world'

"In many cases, humour has been used as a means to advance the agenda of anti-democratic forces in society - Have I Got News For You? was used by Boris Johnson to hone his bumbling fool persona"

Eleanor Tiernan

Being a comedian these days has become a hazardous occupation. I looked up my friend’s show the other day and it just said “Cancelled”. I couldn’t tell if they had said something stupid or if it just wasn’t on.

Sometimes, in these turbulent times, I think back to the days when I was writing and performing on Irish Pictorial Weekly on RTÉ. For those too young to remember, it was a weekly TV show that satirised politics and media through sketches. I played Ursula McCarthy, an RTÉ reporter who delivered diplomatically written accounts of madcap courtroom scenes. People still send me newspaper articles of similar real-life situations which usually prove the point that, if anything, in our writing of the scripts, we were too tame.