- Thursday, May 16, 2024
By: Pramod Thomas
THE BBC has axed the left-wing satire show The Mash Report to ‘make room for new comedy shows’.
The show, a satirical take on the week’s news which featured Nish Kumar and Rachel Parris, first aired in 2017.
Kumar hit back at the broadcaster’s decision to cancel the programme, posting a picture of himself in front of the words ‘Boris Johnson is a liar and a racist’, reported The Daily Mail.
“A lot of people asking me for a comment and here it is,” he wrote on Twitter.
“We are very proud of The Mash Report but, in order to make room for new comedy shows, we sometimes have to make difficult decisions and it won’t be returning,” the BBC said in a statement.
“We would like to thank all those involved in four brilliant series and hope to work with Nish Kumar, Rachel Parris and the team in the future.”
In 2018, broadcaster Andrew Neil singled out the satire show while complaining that the corporation’s comedy output was too left-wing, The Daily Mail report said.
He called the BBC Two programme ‘self-satisfied, self-adulatory, unchallenged left-wing propaganda’.
In September last year, director-general Tim Davie told staff the BBC needed to keep reforming ‘with urgency’ and stressed it must be ‘a universal public service’.
Many view the latest action is in line with his statement. “Love the show and this is unfair,” a user wrote on Twitter.
But others disagreed, with another person said: “The Mash Report was terrible, that’s why it’s been cancelled.” Another person posted: “Can I just point out The Mash Report was completely unfunny.”
Kumar, who also hosted Joel & Nish vs The World, often centres his stand-up routine on political matters and he is no stranger to controversy.
In December 2018, he apologised for giving a platform to Steve Topple, a ‘left-wing journalist who promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories’.
In 2019, he said ‘the architects of Brexit are a cocktail of lying racists and buffoons’, reports said.
Last year, a show he hosted, Horrible Histories Brexit, provoked outrage after suggesting Britain had historically failed to produce anything of note, relying instead on imports.
Historian Andrew Roberts described the ten-minute show, which was released to coincide with the departure from the EU, as ‘a stream of bigoted hatred directed against this country’.
In 2019, Kumar had bread thrown at him and was booed off stage after making a political joke at a charity cricket lunch.
Speaking on Graham Norton’s New Year’s Eve special, Kumar described long-time Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage as ‘a sack of meat brought to life by a witch’s curse’.
The BBC‘s decision to axe the show comes ahead of its annual TV licence fee being increased by £1.50, from £157.50 to £159, from 1 April 2021. This is the equivalent of £13.12 per month.
