A Chump at Oxford - Reboot

When, I started this blog I had some idea that it would touch on politics occasionally but British politics is now so extreme and polarised that it is hard to make it funny.

Our current Prime Minister and his cabinet with their black and white thinking and Commons majority of 1 seem to be stuck perpetually in a surreal black farce that holds many similarities with Laurel and Hardy’s 1939 comedy film “A Chump at Oxford”.  In this film Laurel and Hardy foil a bank heist by accident when one of them discards a banana skin that trips up the robbers and allows for the feeling of their collars...  When asked by the Bank owner how they would like to be rewarded the idiotic duo reply that they would like “a good education” because the fact they don’t have one is the reason that they “never get no place”. 

Of course the real reason they “never get no place” is they are not very intelligent but…  Just like Boris they are promptly whisked away from America to the hallowed grounds of Oxford University.  After such hilarious mishaps as being tricked by other students into believing the Dean’s quarters are their own and squirting him with soda water … Stan receives an accidental bump on the head from a sash window frame… and this causes him to recall his old lost identity “Lord Paddington”.

Just like Boris Johnson … Stan Laurel underlines his newly raised social status by combing down his fright wig instead of having his hair all over the place and ceases behaving like a buffoon to instantly become an unlovable bully instead – inverting his usual position in the comedy act.  Just like Boris Johnson … also-ran Stanley now suddenly becomes a winner at everything, unbelievably pompous and talks in a more upper crust accent.  He employs his old friend Oliver as his valet and roundly insults him by telling him to hold both his chin and his double chin in. 

Eventually Oliver resolves to leave Stanley in Oxford and return to America alone but matters are quickly resolved when the sash window bumps “Lord Paddington” on the head again and he reverts back to his old identity of Stan Laurel.  Oliver hugs his old long lost friend and the credits roll.

I suspect that a sash window frame is also behind the current peculiar state of affairs by which Boris Johnson has somehow become Prime Minister… if only one would fall on his head again.  We can but hope…