There have been a few attempts at creating a British equivalent of the The Onion (legend has it that it was funny once) over the years but, to my knowledge, none were successful
Over the weekend quite a few people (including myself) were linking to a spoof headline on a new British fake news site which shows some promise…
LONDON BOMB 'NOT SCARY ENOUGH', BROWN TELLS MI5
Since then The Daily Mash has followed up with stories that include…
UK THREAT LEVEL RAISED TO 'UNDERPANTS'
DAILY MASH UNVEILS 'TERROR-NEWS' LOGO
AIRPORT ATTACKERS TO BE CHARGED UNDER ANTI-SMOKING LAWS
Fine work. It smacks of someone trawling through a few dozen forums and blogs and nicking the best comments but fine, and important, work nevertheless
Other, non terror related, headlines that have caught my eye include…
- Rosa Klebb wins labour deputy contest
- BRITAIN FLOODED WITH VOMIT AFTER DIANA CONCERT "We managed to hold it down until Blair and then it was like The Exorcist," say TV viewers
- And an excellent extract from Ricky Gervais’ (sic.) blog that is absolutely spot on IMHO
"... Heard the news today that Bernard Manning is dead. As I sat on my hotel balcony, texting Gary Shandling, the totally brilliant genius behind Larry Sanders, I started thinking to myself that comedy has come a long, long way since those dark days when smoke-filled working men's clubs were home to comedians making fun of minorities without even doing it ironically. That's just lazy"
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13 comments:
The Daily Mash is really good. There was a big wave of these British Onion style sites a few years back that were uniformly awful, but this one seems unafraid to go the extra mile and say a few things the others don't. Far too much internet satire is of the safe cosy variety you see on TV panel game shows.
I used to do one myself many years ago and this story upset a lot of people, but they were all Americans so it was ok - http://www.chairmanmoo.co.uk/article.asp?category=worldnews&id=91&key=911
I particularly enjoyed the satirical US response to that Daily Moo article which waxes lyrical with lines like...
"Early this morning in England, a team of crack commando red-necks stormed the home of Chairman Moo and forced him to watch footage of WWII in which the US assisted England from the threat of Germany "bombing them in to the ocean"
"We think he just needs to remember that London would be a filthy pile of rubble if it weren't for us."
which only serves to prove that no matter how shit the average standard of education in the UK becomes there will always be at least one country that is worse
including that bit of history where the US government smuggled the team that built the Nazi rockets that plastered London and set them up in their own city in Alabama
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
Oh yes that was brilliant. I'd like to think that he was double bluffing me and it was in fact a superb satire of a idiotic American. But he wasn't.
The Americans definetly got the pick of the best Nazis after WW2. Some of Hitler's finest propagandists and torturers kindly assisted the Yanks to set up the CIA too.
And the less said about Wall Street, General Electric, Ford and Standard Oil's murky relationship with Adolf the better...
One of the best attempts to rationalise a large US corporation's involvement with Nazi Germany here...
http://snopes.com/cokelore/fanta.asp
I fucking hate snopes. Many a time I've seen potentially interesting arguments ended by someone posting the snopes verdict on what is been discussed as though it is the ultimate arbiter of 'truth'. I've spent a fair few hours in my time arguing about various issues on the messageboards and blogs and invariably someone will say I'm a conspiracy theory looney who believes everything they read on the internet. Then they'll 'prove' why I'm wrong by posting a link to snopes!
I mean, snopes is so conservative you'd almost think they were running it straight out of Langley...
Strangely enough the one urban legend I haven't seen covered by Snopes is the one that goes 'Snopes was set up by the CIA'...
A strong candidate for the best attempt at covering neocon arse by Snopes ever...
www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/barbara.asp
They've got their work cut out keeping up with the bbc just now
It's a hard task worthy of King Canute but I'm glad somebody's doing it
Never ever ever trust a website that labels its posts 'TRUE' and 'FALSE'.
Are snopes peddling some kind of agenda? 'TRUE!'
thebrainstrust.co.uk (long dead) was often called the Onion for the uk. Except it died, which the Onion of course has not. The Onion had one of the funniest and oddly prophetic pieces sometime back:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/terrorist_extremely_annoyed_by
(My browser actively stops the Onion due to its flash content. Oh well.)
@Stef: I got served by Rosa Klebb in Harvey Nicks' Cafe last Thursday.
@DE: try Safari for Windows, it works just fine ;-)
@DE - that is indeed an oddly prophetic piece which I'd never seen before. I thank you
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