On April 29th, The Daily Show took its second glance at the 2010 UK General Election, wittily adapting a running joke of theirs in order to name the segment “Clustershag To 10 Downing” (omitting ‘Street’ for some reason. Those Americans, eh?), mentioning the second leader’s debate, but mainly centring on the Gillian Duffy Bigotgate ‘scandal’. It was all pretty much as enjoyable as you could expect from an American comedy programme looking at British current affairs, what with the show using the word ‘England’ to mean the entire United Kingdom, making jokes about tea, Susan Boyle etc.
“Whoa! WHOA! Are you guys talking about our general election?” would interject Oliver, “I was just off home, because you gave me the night off, but I could have done this segment!” Cue the two American comedians looking comically shifty, before finally admitting they were hoping to use the segment to trot out lots of lazy generalisations. And then, back to the original script. Mainly containing more lazy and wrong generalisations. Hey, us British, yeah? We’re all about the metric system, aren’t we?
BUT ANYWAY. Much of the second half of the show was taken up by an interview with Sir Michael “You’re Only Supposed To Give Jim Morrison And His Band Oral Sex” Caine, who was doing the chat show rounds to promote mediocre Brit-em-up Harry Brown. After a few minutes of banter about the film, it being a bit like Death Wish, and Jon Stewart politely laughing a bit too much at Caine’s not-remotely-funny quip about Harry Brown being “Clockwork Orange Now”, talk turned to the 2010 UK General Election.
CAINE, FINISHING A STORY ABOUT BRITISH COUNCIL ESTATES WHILE GESTURING TOWARDS THE DAILY SHOW AUDIENCE: …you got all these people, I been watching you, what you been doing with our political system…
STEWART: Here, here in this country,..
CAINE: I’ve been watching the show, you know…
STEWART: We’ve got to cut the feedback there, I dunno why we let people watch the show…
CAINE: Yeah, I was watching all that. I’m gonna tell Gordon Brown all about you.
STEWART, EXPRESSING FAKE SHOCK: Don’t!
CAINE GIGGLES
STEWART: Don’t!
CAINE: I’m gonna! I’m going back tomorrow, he’s gonna hear!
STEWART: I…
[AWKWARD JUMP CUT]
STEWART, TALKING ABOUT GORDON BROWN: Has this, in England… has he just bottomed out? Has support for Labour just… has the incident with this woman just…?
CAINE: You know what happened? It’s television. There’s a party, the Liberals, they were, I mean, they were a joke.
STEWART: The Lib Dems?
CAINE: The Lib Dems. Well, now Nick Clegg came on, who was always treated in parliament like the sort of tea boy.
[STEWART LAUGHS, THE AUDIENCE GIGGLES]
CAINE: Once they got on television, the three of them got on television, he walked away with the show!
STEWART: It’s like the Nixon-Kennedy debates! Gordon Brown really looks like “I don’t need make-up! I’ll go out here and do whatever…” and then he started sweating, and the whole ‘thing’.
CAINE: Yeah, and then Kennedy wiped the whole floor with him. That’s what Nick Clegg did with the other two!
[MUCH MORE SUBTLE JUMP CUT]
CAINE: The whole political situation in Britain is absolutely different from anything it’s been in a hundred years, and for me at least, and for British people, it’s fascinating, ‘cos you really don’t… they election’s next… Friday?
Only one day out, Michael. Still, that’s one less vote for the Conservatives, we guess. (And hey, it mirrored a funny joke we made on Twitter the other day). That second jump cut is handled much more subtly than the first, by the way. The first has the obvious ‘white flash’ effect most often used when skipping past Jon Stewart’s throw to the second Com Cent ad break. The second edit has no such white flash, and can only really be picked up by noticing that Caine’s statements either side of it, along with his mannerisms, don’t go together at all.
So, what was actually said? It’s not easy to find out, as the video of that interview on the Daily Show website is annoyingly blocked to UK residents. However, thanks to Hotspot Shield, we’re able to circumvent the pesky region protection on the entire (utterly fantastic) Daily Show archive, and transcribe the hidden bits. Here, with the SUPER SECRET PARTS re-added, is the full transcript of that part of the interview. Though, if you’re in the USA (or you’ve got Hotspot Shield installed and activated), you can see it for yourself here.
Parts deleted from the UK More4 edit in red.
CAINE, FINISHING A STORY ABOUT BRITISH COUNCIL ESTATES WHILE GESTURING TOWARDS THE DAILY SHOW AUDIENCE: …you got all these people, I been watching you, what you been doing with our political system…
STEWART: Here, here in this country,..
CAINE: I’ve been watching the show, you know…
STEWART: We’ve got to cut the feedback there, I dunno why we let people watch the show…
CAINE: Yeah, I was watching all that. I’m gonna tell Gordon Brown all about you.
STEWART, EXPRESSING FAKE SHOCK: Don’t!
CAINE GIGGLES
STEWART: Don’t!
CAINE: I’m gonna! I’m going back tomorrow, he’s gonna hear!
STEWART: I have a feeling he’s gonna be unemployed soon anyway, he’ll have the time to come over here…
CAINE: Hopefully.
STEWART: Have, have you been… has this, in England… has he just bottomed out? Has support for Labour just… has the incident with this woman just…?
CAINE: You know what happened? It’s television. There’s a party, the Liberals, they were, I mean, they were a joke.
STEWART: The Lib Dems?
CAINE: The Lib Dems. Well, now Nick Clegg came on, who was always treated in parliament like the sort of tea boy.
STEWART LAUGHS, THE AUDIENCE GIGGLES
CAINE: Once they got on television, the three of them got on television, he walked away with the show!
STEWART: It’s like the Nixon-Kennedy debates! Gordon Brown really looks like “I don’t need make-up! I’ll go out here and do whatever…” and then he started sweating, and the whole ‘thing’.
CAINE: Yeah, and then Kennedy wiped the whole floor with him. That’s what Nick Clegg did with the other two! I mean, people are fighting back now, ‘cos they’ve looked at the Lib Dem policies!
CAINE AND STEWART BOTH LAUGH
STEWART: “Oh, that’s the tea boy guy!”
CAINE: “Oh, is that what he was gonna do? Oh, well maybe we won’t vote for him…” But anyway… the whole political situation in Britain is absolutely different from anything it’s been in a hundred years, and for me at least, and for British people, it’s fascinating, ‘cos you really don’t… they election’s next… Friday?
At least the term “clustershag” wasn’t censored, despite The Daily Show’s 8.30pm slot, and despite Film4’s trails for “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” asterisking out the offending ‘other S-word’ at all times of the day.
In any case, edit news, there. Election results night live blog is SO on.
(Actually, we prepared this update two days in advance. It’s pre-recorded, just like Channel Four’s election night episode of You Have Been Watching. But our point stands.)
3 .:
I saw this in full ("Live" -- Ed) via ("Legitimate electro-television in a fully accredited county" -- Ed) and (while agreeing J Stewart was laughing neon-conspicuously at an obvious hero) discounted M Caine's dimwittedly partisan performance under the S Milligan Rule.
(If Brokes' pretty readers are unaware of the rule, it states that it's perfectly possible to divorce a treasured theatricist from wonky views outwith their control vide background and/or upbringing, named after S Milligan (of whom it has been said), eg in the The Goons ep with the notorious "That word is verboten!" exchange.)
Although it would have been tremendous if someone had shouted from the indulgently chuckling audience, "In fact, Sir M Caine, the Lib Dems cannot so easily be dismissed in scoffing terms, fatty. Also, D Cameron's policies are mathematically suspect to say the least. Here is a graph."
Incidentally (thanks, no-edit button), the bit which tips it (modestly unspotlighted by Brokes) is when Sir M Caine refers to N Labour as a "Socialist government," ahhhhhhh.
Really? Must have missed that bit. It presumably occurred during one of the parts I'd dozed off for, where Michael Caine kept banging on about how his new film was a cinematic landmark, as opposed to something Nick Love probably turned down.
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