Comedy contra Woke
Titania McGrath strikes again! This hard-hitting cultural critic, poet, activist and author has written a splendid primer for children who aspire to join the ranks of post-modern pioneers. If you are concerned that your child is not aware of the plight that stifles the majority of minorities, then this is the book for you. Her masterly (sorry, mistressly) appraisal of the oppressions that prevent former public school girls from becoming shrilling advocates of the BAME community reminds the reader how wrong our inherited sentiments truly are.
In reality, this is another publication under the controversial persona created by the comedian and Spiked columnist Andrew Doyle. He opens with an explanation of Titania’s journey and the realisations that made her the chorister-queen of the cacophonic twitter-sphere. The reader is then led through a catalogue of hilariously absurd profiles which jokingly highlight our moral misapprehensions of monsters like Abu Bakr al-Bagdadhi and which sarcastically emphasise the hypocrisy of sanctimonious icons like Greta Thunberg. Doyle scores a good joke every other line, rendering this an exceptionally difficult book to read, by virtue of the fact that regular laughter loosens your grip and it repeatedly falls to the floor. Excessive laughter can also be exhausting and so this book offers a good sleep to anyone who finds the preachy piety of Meghan and Harry sickening. Doyle subsumes and cites a whole lexicon of obscure woke terminology to reveal the detailed insularity that incubates a growing hatred of all things traditional and therefore this read is thoroughly didactic for unenlightened fools who cannot tell the difference between cisgender-queerbaiting and heteronormativity. One of the most enjoyable segments of the book is its interval entitled: how to win an argument. At this point, the parody portrait of part-time militant reformers hits a high note when Titania advises her readers to simply ignore those who disagree with their precious principles. The serious consequences of a disengaged and active political force ignoring alternative explanations for social causes and outcomes deserves to be ridiculed again and again and again until the oxygen this intolerance needs to survive is entirely sucked away.
The last section of this brilliantly funny book of satire is Titania’s collection of poetry. This selection of her favourite slam verses is riddled with pretentious words, effusive feelings for our environment, rages against the oppressive patriarchy we labour under and a number of horrific holier-than-thou moments which if sincerely written would churn the stomach. The fictional McGrath must have read Wallace Stevens and TS Eliot at University and felt compelled to apply their esoteric terms and highfalutin intonations to the lyrical medium of protest poetry. The book provided me with a new hobby which was to recite stanzas of McGrath’s work within earshot of my father and to drown out his complaints about what he was hearing with louder citations of Titania’s most controversial quotations. Once he understood the joke, he picked up the book and has now read it twice. I heard him giggling in his study like a schoolboy and so I asked him which bit he was reading. He said he had finished it in one sitting the day before but couldn’t stop laughing about it. He has now ordered eight copies for family and friends and considers it worthy of Johnathan Swift or Peter Cook. I am inclined to agree.
Doyle has delivered a first-rate comic book that lands blow after blow on the overly sensitive and poignantly lampoons illiberal extremists who currently stunt our political discourse. Without a doubt, this is the funniest and most relevant book I’ve read this year. I hope this isn’t the last we see of Miss McGrath. I’ve become a big fan.