Bad Enoch, Tony B. Liar, and other political nicknames so cringey they could convince you to switch sides

KEEP seeing people using ‘hilarious’ nicknames for politicians that are actually just painfully lame? Here is a selection of the worst.

Tony B. Liar

An early entry for tedious-as-f**k political nicknames was Tony B. Liar, which came about due to Blair lying to the public about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. This happened in 2003, over two decades ago, and yet dickheads still wheel it out constantly as if it’s an immensely pithy joke rather than a tiresome play on words. See also: Nu LieBore.

Bad Enoch

Haha, the new Conservative leader’s name can be broken down into a reference to a barmy far-right politician famous for making nasty speeches about race wars. It might have raised a small wry smile the first time it was used, but now it’s been bandied about Twitter so much it’s as funny as the Dead Parrot sketch, which is to say, not at all.

Priti Vacant

Is a reference to a mediocre song by a 70s punk band incisive and clever these days? Or is it a desperate attempt to shoehorn Priti Patel’s name into a sobriquet any old how? Definitely the latter, because, however much you hate her, you can’t really accuse Patel of being ‘vacant’. She’s too laser-focused on victimising minorities for that.

Kamikwasi

While we know Kwasi Kwarteng was the architect of the budget that f**ked everyone’s mortgages, this is confusing to read, awkward to say, and never caught on. Maybe it’s because he wasn’t as obviously insane as his boss Liz Truss, so this one felt a bit superfluous. Truss herself got called ‘The Human Hand Grenade’, which could be the name of an old, hastily-conceived Marvel character and is actually kind of cool.

Sir Beer Korma

Conservatives are weirdly keen on nicknames for Starmer, such as ‘Captain Hindsight’.and ‘Sir Softie’, both used by Rishi Sunak. Lefties meanwhile opted for ‘Sir Kid Starver’ and ‘Keith’. There’s also ‘Two-Tier Keir’, beloved by those who don’t think racist thugs who try to burn down hotels full of asylum seekers should be put in prison. The worst, though, is ‘Sir Beer Korma’. Not only was it a complete non-story that Starmer had a curry during Covid, it’s so laboured it barely resembles his name anymore.

tRump

Only works written down and, let’s face it, is lame. Even Trump would think it’s lame, and he loves a crap nickname, as he proved by using ones like ‘Sleepy Joe’ and ‘Killary’. What is it suggesting? That he’s a choice bit of beef? That he’s got a big bum? His actual name is funnier, as it means ‘fart’. Well, it is if you’re seven years old, which is a higher mental age than those tittering as they type out ‘tRump’.

Bananarama are old now: How to explain Band Aid without weeping

DO They Know It’s Christmas? is being rereleased with modern artists like Harry Styles added in. It could be a traumatic trip down Memory Lane if you’re middle-aged, so brace yourself for the following…  

Bananarama are old now

Any young person you discuss Band Aid with probably won’t be sure who these 80s icons were, and there’s no grimmer indicator of the passage of time than the fact that Sara, Siobhan and Keren are all in their 60s now. At least they’re still fit. You’re not. None of this is good.

£8 million hardly buys you anything these days

Another unwelcome reminder of your age is that the original single raised just £8 million. Even adjusting for inflation it’s still only £25 million, which is not that much in modern Britain with its mad property prices. The proceeds of the original would only buy Ethiopians 36 semi-detached houses in London now, but at least a lucky few would be on the property ladder.

Your 1984 youth is gone forever

Unlike in 1984, you won’t be rushing home from WHSmith to play the 7” single way too many times. Nor will you be insanely excited about getting a new pair of Pumas, or the slim possibility of snogging someone at the next crap teenage party you go to. Now you just feel a bit knackered all the time and not very excited about anything. Although that’s not really Midge Ure’s fault. 

A lot of the artists are dead

There are many fatalities among the Live Aid line-up of 1985: Freddie Mercury, George Michael, David Bowie, Status Quo’s Rick Parfitt, John Entwistle of The Who, Tom Petty if you count the American bit, and non-household names like Dire Straits guitarist Jack Sonni, plus others. Even the cameraman Freddie did a dance with on stage is dead. It’s hard to be joyful about Band Aid 2024 when it’s basically a massacre.

Two Bonos is against nature

Most people are weary of Bono and wish he’d have a long holiday from being famous. However this year’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? will feature Bono singing in 1984 and also him breathily yowling away now. This is just unnatural and wrong, like trying to weaponise dinosaurs. Why can’t we learn from Jurassic World

Christmas is rubbish when you’re an adult

Ethiopians may not have known it was Christmas, but you as a child definitely did. It was a time of both ‘big’ and ‘small’ presents, playing handheld Pac-Man on the last day of school, cracking loads of Brazil nuts just to use the nutcracker, building a muddy snowman and barfing up a massive tin of Quality Street. All that is no longer for you. The BBC may be plugging Band Aid 2024 relentlessly, but you won’t be getting an AT-AT Walker this year.

Massive ennui about our rebooted, recycled world 

If you recently laboured through Alien: Romulus, the shitty Star Wars sequels, Netflix’s The Day of the Jackal, and so on, you can be forgiven for thinking creativity and risk-taking are dead, and all anyone is interested in is reliving the glories of the past, even charity records. Ant and Dec may as well rerelease Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble and we can relive the heady days of Childline 2013.