Still, you can count on The Thick Of It to call the bluff of your expectations (if you follow me), letting what should have been a serious policy debate get overrun with listeners’ texts about piercing – the best likening it to a robot wearing flesh earrings – and peaking with a producer producing the line of the episode: “I can’t believe my ears, did we just break a story that wasn’t that the Ipswich manager’s got sacked?” I have no idea if that is fair on 5 Live, but I’m willing to believe it. Still, this did feel like the weakest episode of the run – admittedly a relative position – with scatological references filling in the gaps around a fairly plodding plot. Everything was referenced from Mark Kermode to Loose Women, and there were more casual insults than I could even keep track of (my notes only recording Pol Pottymouth, Bagpuss, Swiss Tony, Captain Mark Phillips and Princess Anne, and the remarkably kind Rupert Brooke). Eventually, the PR heads, Malcolm and Stewart, got stuck in to what the writers, presumably, thought would be a clash of the titans, but something didn’t quite work with the suggestion that Stewart is Malcolm’s equal. We’ve watched Malcolm chase opposition politicians as a blood sport and know that he is King Bollock. So far, Stewart has been an airy idiot with a mind matrix, worrying about how to “appeal to One Show man and Holby City woman”. Let’s hope they don’t meet again any time soon. Read our review of episode 4 here.
