Oh the Humanity!

Barring notable exceptions such as Marcus Brigstocke's creditably thought-out recent appearance on Question Time, comedians really shouldn't confuse their knack for making the odd satirical aside on the news with being able to offer something of actual weight. The likes of Marks Thomas and Steel do not count, both having opted a long while back for satirically-tinted political comment as their field, leaving stand-up to the gag merchants.

No, I mean the Frank Skinners who get complacent after getting their column in a broadsheet and choose to comment on matters clearly outside their proficiencies such as, in this case, the braining of Berlusconi. There's no intellectual strigency at all. We're now to feel sorry for the old gangster because he's been bleeding on telly, which apparently shows us that he's human after all. And what is he really guilty of, anyway? According to Frank,

'Berlusconi might be a silly, egotistical old man who can’t keep his trousers on, but he didn’t deserve that.'

Really. Not an irredeemably corrupt quasi-dictator with less moral fibre than a pyramid scheme hawker, who's mangled Italy's already hopelessly precarious legislative system beyond all hope of repair in his mania to stay in power, then. No, he's Benny Hill. And now someone's broken Ernie the Milkman's nose.

Sadly, Italy is a nation of Skinners, and no matter what mayfly groups may have sprung up on the net, gleeful at someone finally doing to Silvio what many have dreamed of doing themselves, the sympathy vote will end up outweighing any positives to be gleaned from this.