Why Tim Key’s poems are the only thing getting me through lockdown Matt Boytwitch, Rishi Perfect, Bohnson on a swing in the Downing Street rose garden – the comedian has produced some of the greatest political cartoons of the pandemic. The poet and comedian Tim Key is not a political man. He can express opinions on the government one-on-one, “when I’m on safe ground”, he tells me, but not, say, at a dinner party. Yet Key s poems are some of the greatest political cartoons of the pandemic. Those he wrote in the past year – roughly one per day
– fell broadly into two categories: the things that people were doing at home during lockdown, and the things being done on the 5pm broadcasts, every day, at No 10, in the room with the flowery carpet.
Last modified on Mon 1 Feb 2021 15.03 EST
Take a supercilious comedian, let him deliver live comedy without leaving the house and what do you get? Something like this live-stream from Tim Key, in which our host reads a handful of poems from his new book, but spends more time cooking his dinner, bathing and chewing the fat with his pal. âDid I pay £8,â asks one viewer-from-home in the live-chat, âto see a 44-year-old fart in a bath?â At points, I too bridled at the self-indulgence, and felt as if I might be on the receiving end of a prank.
But that is often oneâs experience of watching Key â and this, it turns out, is a perfectly logical way to map his shtick on to lockdown reality. It also gets increasingly funny, as you tune into the awkward rhythms of Keyâs backchat with co-host and sound guy Edward Easton â a fantastic sketch comic himself, but very much the halting Sidekick Simon here to Keyâs Alan Partridge.