Count Binface: Bindepedence Day – Oran Mor, Glasgow

With British political party season approaching, Count Binface has stolen an (imperial) march on his rivals by launching his manifesto early.

And such is the widespread low opinion of the political class currently and general gloom that some of the satirical policies of the dustbin-headed leader of the Recyclons, hailing from the planet Sigma IX, border on the genuinely compelling.

As with any political leader, this alien agitator isn’t immune to gaffes, his Star Wars-inspired introduction beset by a few technical gremlins and a false start. But he sweeps on and off the stage with authority more-or-less intact, despite his vision-restricted costume. And thereafter, Bindepedence Day is a slick Powerpoint presentation, chronicling his high-profile challenges to the likes of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, his conquering of the British media landscape and his proposals to save humanity from itself.

Binface’s human creator, Jon Harvey, has spent a lot of time writing and producing satirical television shows such as Have I Got News For You and The Revolution Will Be Televised. And he proves himself accomplished at sourcing the choicest audio and visual clips to tell Binface’s story, as well as the most humiliating episodes of his Conservative and Labour enemies.

Mind you, after some particularly impressive flubbing from Priti Patel and Ed Balls it must be acknowledged that the sheer level of scrutiny modern politicians are exposed to means that anyone could be portrayed as a blithering fool from a single clip in isolation.

That extends to the media as well, with the show featuring a lively rundown of the times journalists have mangled the pronunciation of Jeremy Hunt’s name. Still, the press love Binface, as evidenced by the amount of coverage the character has attracted. Similar to spoofs such as Spaceballs and Eddie Izzard’s famous Death Star cafeteria routine, there’s tremendous fun in having a haughtily aristocratic, seemingly all-powerful Darth Vader parody exasperated and reeling with incredulity at the exceptional stupidity he’s witness to.

By the by, having needed to modify the character from its earlier incarnation of Lord Buckethead due to a copyright issue, Harvey is now equipped with a vast dump of bin puns, which he deploys with judiciously inspired, electioneering savvy.

More than this though, the character speaks to something peculiarly British, of eccentricity, but also a veneration of democracy. Sure, it’s amusing to witness Binface in shot behind Johnson or Sadiq Khan at the General Election or London Mayoral vote count, still more to see him featured in the otherwise sober BBC graphics on election night. But by beating the likes of Britain First and giving a bloody nose to the fascists, he’s really emphasising the value of voting in an effective, non-condescending manner.

All the while, on issues such as getting the price of croissants capped, if not bringing disgraced water company bosses to justice or returning BBC comedy-drama Lovejoy to its pre-eminence in British cultural life, he can point to some verifiable successes.

Although the show is pretty tightly structured, initially the Binface emergence story, his symbolic victories in successive elections and his enchanting of the media, before he goes on to outline his outlandish and not-so-outlandish policies for the future in some detail, room has been left for some up-to-the-minute, topical quips. Donald Trump is the gift that’s keeps on giving in this respect. And Harvey proves himself reasonably adept at ad-libbing, no mean feat given the expressionless, unwieldy costume.

There is a degree of diminishing returns to the thoroughness of his manifesto, with a parodical adherence to one big, headline-grabbing policy for each office of state, be it defence, education, etc, which makes the material feel a little stretched in parts. Yet there’s an effective balance of the straightforwardly daft and the more archly, if none-too-savagely satirical to the proposals.

For obvious reasons, despite their relatively similar length of time in Downing Street, there are more gags about Liz Truss’ premiership say, than Keir Starmer’s. But on this evidence, and the first few months of the new administration, Count Binface will find it as easy to send up the Labour government as the Tories and will be running for public office again soon.

Runs until 27 October 2024 | Image: Contributed