Andy Richardson: Don't try this at home, folks
When Ronald Reagan governed as the 40th President of the USA, he became a star on the satirical British puppet show Spitting Image.
In one brilliant sketch, the programme showed the President’s brain making an unlikely escape and being replaced by a walnut. The walnut, it turned out, had more intelligence than Reagan’s brain and the President’s aides were reassured when the nut was leading the land of the free.
Spitting Image makes a comeback this autumn. It will lampoon such figures as Vladimir Putin, Prince Andrew, Adele, Beyoncé, Elon Musk, Kim Kardashian and James Corden. The climate change activist Greta Thunberg will be satirised as a weather girl. And perhaps Donald Trump will feature with the walnut that once passed for Reagan’s brain.
The online comedian Michael Spicer has brilliantly featured Trump in his YouTube sketch show The Room Next Door. But no comedians were required to make The Sun King look foolish at a recent Covid-19 press briefing. He did that by himself.
Noting that disinfectant killed Covid-19, Trump suggested injecting it into the body. Which would be nice, if lungs were made of marble. The former TV star with no medical background wasn’t done. As millions watched anxiously he wondered aloud whether light could be injected into the, erm, body, to, like, y’know, kill the virus. And if that didn’t work, maybe heat could be used instead.
Trump was quick to caveat his genius with a warning: “Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. I’m not a doctor, but I’m, like, a person that has a good you know what,” he said, pointing to his head. Millions finished the sentence for him: “Walnut.”
A grim-faced reporter challenged him about the bleach-light-heat cure to the deadliest virus in 100 years. Trump pivoted and slam-dunked. “I’m the President and you’re fake news.” Organisers of The American Academy of Diplomacy had their next award winner right there.
And so there it is. While billions obsess about online jigsaws, furlough payments and PPE, Trump has solved it. A quick disinfectant chaser followed by an hour on a sunbed, five minutes in an oven and an evening at a nightclub with UV spotlights and we’ll all be fine. And just in case anyone really does have a walnut for a brain, here’s the spoiler. Don’t try any of those things at home.
