"Yes, Deputy Prime Minister" series slammed as "preposterous"
9 Jul 2006 by hra
The new series of "Yes, Deputy Prime Minister" has prompted a storm of controversy among senior political figures, according to the latest audience research conducted by DeadBrain. In a departure from the relatively harmless Jim Hacker of yesteryear, this latest series has been brought thoroughly up to date, depicting an uncouth, pugilistic, womanising, fast-food-guzzling buffoon of Billy Bunter proportions who embarks on a series of farcical gaffes, each one more absurd than the last.
The series has been swiftly condemned as "fanciful", "totally unrealistic", and "an affront to democracy" by senior Downing Street officials, who claim the series is so utterly far-fetched as to be even beyond the bounds of satire.
In the latest episode of the series, the fictional DPM takes time off from his bacon butties and extra-marital affairs to embark on clandestine dealings with a secretive US billionaire tycoon who has been plotting a lucrative deal to turn the Millennium Dome into a multi-million pound super-casino. The scene is set at the tycoon's luxury ranch where, as a mark of his esteem for his extremely well-placed British friend, he presents him with a cowboy outfit of a Stetson, hand-tooled boots and his very own personalised Teflon-buckled belt.
In a bizarre twist, an account of the meeting is "accidentally" leaked by tipsy diplomats, whereupon the DPM – straight-faced and thankfully no longer wearing the cowboy outfit – says he really just wanted to have a go on the horses and chat about sugar-beet and slavery abolitionists and would Mr Humphrys please stop asking him embarrassing questions about his other extra-marital affairs. The episode ends with a shot of the Prime Minister proclaiming his "complete confidence" in the DPM.
"No responsible Government minister would go round behaving like this idiot," an irate aide to Tony Blair told DeadBrain today. "It's preposterous. It makes New Labour look like complete muppets. We'll sue." He added, "This character wouldn't have lasted five minutes in office in real life. He'd have been thrown out. Or wouldn't have got where he did in the first place, not if anyone had any sense."
Another aide also slammed the "Casinogate" episode: "Surely the Cabinet Secretary would have been onto something like that as soon as the allegations surfaced? The PM wouldn't have lost a moment in making damn sure he did his job either. You wouldn't have the most senior figures in Government just sitting around and ignoring the Ministerial Code, would you? The whole thing's patently absurd."
Lawsuits are also flooding in from viewers on both sides of the Atlantic who say they laughed so much at the sight of the DPM cavorting around in his cowboy outfit that they choked on their pretzels.
John Prescott, the real-life Deputy Prime Minister at the time of writing, and who is reportedly widely tipped to receive a peerage for his unstinting services to sleaze, was unavailable for comment but was last seen dressed in full Western regalia bellowing "Yee-Haaa" whilst enthusiastically pursuing his diary secretary round the office with a lasso.
