Novelist quits 'comfortable' HIGNFY

After appearing on Friday’s episode, the novelist said that the show has become ‘comfortable’ and ‘just like any other pseudo-panel contest’.

However, he could simply be piqued, as he claimed: ‘The sharpest crack I made all evening - and the one that received the most audience laughter - was cut for transmission.’

Self didn’t repeat the gag in his London Evening Standard column bemoaning the show’s lack of edge, but claimed that the fact his line was dropped was evidence that ‘in the post-Hutton era, the BBC seems to have lost its bottle so far as edgy satire is concerned’.

The writer is the show's most frequent guest, with ten appearances to his name, but now says: ‘In its heyday HIGNFY was in the very cockpit of British satire: a prototype kind of reality TV in which unwitting politicians were parachuted into a jungle full of backbiting repartee.

‘The show's regular panellists, Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, remain just as funny… but inevitably, age and success have mellowed them. It's hard to credit them as effectively wielding what is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful, when they're so clearly part of an elite.

‘Meanwhile, the political class has got wise to the show's format. No serving or aspiring politician can "win" HIGNFY; the best they can hope for is to not lose. If, like Boris Johnson, they succeed in making a TV audience laugh, they're never going to be regarded as truly serious ever again.

‘I'm afraid that without the reality element, the programme has become just like any other pseudo-panel contest, where funny fellows sit behind desks cracking jokes.’

He is the second guest in as many weeks to have quit the show. The previous week’s host, Ann Widdecombe said she hated panellist Jimmy Carr so much she couldn’t risk being put through the experience again.

‘His idea of wit is a barrage of filth and the sort of humour most men grow out of in their teens,’ she complained. ‘The edit got rid of much of it but there's no amount of money for which I would go through those two recording hours again. At one stage I nearly walked out.’

Published: 5 Dec 2007