The Trial of Tony Blair
We watched a mockumentary called The Trial of Tony Blair last night and I only hope one day that he is arrested and tried in the Hague. I would celebrate heartily if that man was tried and locked up for his crimes against humanity.
There was an amusing bit showing Tony and Cherie Blair eating breakfast and he read out, "George W Bush is back in rehab after he was found unconscious at his ranch" and Cherie says "Who would know?" ;-)
The Times. Carol Midgley: Last night's TV
If Tony Blair is even a tenth as narcissistic as he appeared in The Trial of Tony Blair (More4; repeated this Thursday on Channel 4) - and I doubt many of us need to ponder too long on that one - then he won’t have been able to resist watching it last night. And if he did - stockinged feet up on the Downing Street pouffe - then genuinely, I feel sorry for him.
Because it must be pretty painful seeing yourself portrayed as a deluded, vain, tortured, friendless yesterday’s man whose own staff snigger behind your back and who can’t even get Kevin Spacey to return his calls. It must be painful to watch, albeit in satire, the ghost of your Christmas future as a paranoid wreck slipping into madness as your sins return to land you in The Hague for war crimes. But then it must be pretty painful being the parent of a dead Iraqi child too, so perhaps we shouldn’t lavish the sympathy too thickly, eh?
Alistair Beaton certainly didn’t. His tragicomic Blair - played, magnificently, by Robert Lindsay - had barely one redeeming feature which, actually, was the drama’s only fault. A shade more realism and a shade less caricature would have made the production even stronger and more difficult for the Blairs to dismiss. Would TB really try to strong-arm a priest into fast-tracking his conversion to Catholicism so that he could confess and get forgiveness, quick? Would Cherie Blair really be so penny-pinching and petty as to nick the lightbulbs from Downing Street when they handed over to the Browns? Erm, well, moving on . . .
The events were set in 2010 when Blair has finally stood down and, uncushioned by ministerial privilege, realised how unpopular he really is. The drama was heavy with Macbethian symbolism - the feverish washing of hands, the guilt-ridden hallucinations - but rather than Banquo’s ghost it was a flag-draped coffin that Blair saw in his dining room. On the TV news he imagined hearing the reports of his own death after he “went out for a walk alone”, evoking echoes of David Kelly’s suicide.
Beaton’s drama gives Blair a bloody nose over Iraq - something most politicians have failed to do. The genius of Lindsay’s performance, apart from his exquisitely observed facial expressions and intonation, was in catching the lack of self-awareness into which the real Blair frequently drifts. The Prime Minister who strums a guitar in a Bee Gee’s mansion as Saddam is jeered to the gallows is not a million miles from Beaton’s Blair who, when the American Embassy calls and his assistant sarcastically suggests they might want him to run for President, assumes he is being serious. It was even better than Lindsay’s self-mocking performance in a recent episode of Extras, which is praise indeed. And if it didn’t make Tony Blair squirm then, truly, nothing will.
There was an amusing bit showing Tony and Cherie Blair eating breakfast and he read out, "George W Bush is back in rehab after he was found unconscious at his ranch" and Cherie says "Who would know?" ;-)
The Times. Carol Midgley: Last night's TV
If Tony Blair is even a tenth as narcissistic as he appeared in The Trial of Tony Blair (More4; repeated this Thursday on Channel 4) - and I doubt many of us need to ponder too long on that one - then he won’t have been able to resist watching it last night. And if he did - stockinged feet up on the Downing Street pouffe - then genuinely, I feel sorry for him.
Because it must be pretty painful seeing yourself portrayed as a deluded, vain, tortured, friendless yesterday’s man whose own staff snigger behind your back and who can’t even get Kevin Spacey to return his calls. It must be painful to watch, albeit in satire, the ghost of your Christmas future as a paranoid wreck slipping into madness as your sins return to land you in The Hague for war crimes. But then it must be pretty painful being the parent of a dead Iraqi child too, so perhaps we shouldn’t lavish the sympathy too thickly, eh?
Alistair Beaton certainly didn’t. His tragicomic Blair - played, magnificently, by Robert Lindsay - had barely one redeeming feature which, actually, was the drama’s only fault. A shade more realism and a shade less caricature would have made the production even stronger and more difficult for the Blairs to dismiss. Would TB really try to strong-arm a priest into fast-tracking his conversion to Catholicism so that he could confess and get forgiveness, quick? Would Cherie Blair really be so penny-pinching and petty as to nick the lightbulbs from Downing Street when they handed over to the Browns? Erm, well, moving on . . .
The events were set in 2010 when Blair has finally stood down and, uncushioned by ministerial privilege, realised how unpopular he really is. The drama was heavy with Macbethian symbolism - the feverish washing of hands, the guilt-ridden hallucinations - but rather than Banquo’s ghost it was a flag-draped coffin that Blair saw in his dining room. On the TV news he imagined hearing the reports of his own death after he “went out for a walk alone”, evoking echoes of David Kelly’s suicide.
Beaton’s drama gives Blair a bloody nose over Iraq - something most politicians have failed to do. The genius of Lindsay’s performance, apart from his exquisitely observed facial expressions and intonation, was in catching the lack of self-awareness into which the real Blair frequently drifts. The Prime Minister who strums a guitar in a Bee Gee’s mansion as Saddam is jeered to the gallows is not a million miles from Beaton’s Blair who, when the American Embassy calls and his assistant sarcastically suggests they might want him to run for President, assumes he is being serious. It was even better than Lindsay’s self-mocking performance in a recent episode of Extras, which is praise indeed. And if it didn’t make Tony Blair squirm then, truly, nothing will.