Look very carefully at this man. Don’t be scared – well, do, actually. He’s terrifying. His name is Malcolm Tucker, and he is the funniest sitcom character that has ever walked this earth.
If you’re based in the US, you may have heard of ‘Veep’, the HBO show written by Armando Ianucci. Well know this: that show has a lot borrowed from its older, wiser UK relative ‘The Thick of It’, which is about the machinations of political power in the UK. But one thing that it doesn’t have is a Malcolm Tucker character.
That’s a very conscious choice. It’s because, as Ianucci said in press for the new series of ‘The Thick of It’ that starts tomorrow here in the UK on BBC2, the US might not be able to handle some of Malcolm’s more…fruity expressions. Let’s put it that way.
This is a man that uses swearing as punctuation and is as inventive with language as Shakespeare. There are any number of Youtube videos out there dedicated to the verbal wit of Malcolm Tucker lambasting his colleagues, but sadly they’re not clipped to individual soundbites. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to sit through a good 18 minutes worth of the best comedy on television out there. In case you don’t have that time to dedicate to swearing (but seriously, you should), here are a collection of the best slapdowns Malcolm Tucker has delivered to unsuspecting humanoids.
Tuckers law – If some cunt can fuck something up, that cunt will take the worst fucking time to fuck it up because that cunt’s a cunt
That’s right: this guy is allowed to say these things on free-to-air British television, which is funded by licence payers. Don’t you love our country?
He’s about as much use as a marzipan dildo.
If you’re looking for an insult to a couple of guys you don’t care about, try this on for size:
Laurel and fucking Hardy! Glad you could join us. Did you manage to get that piano up the stairs OK?
In British politics, our Parliament is divided up into front bench (important) members of parliament and backbench (junior) members. So this little slapdown might make a little more sense now:
You’re so back-bench, you’ve actually fucking fallen off. You’re out by the fucking bins where I put you.
So all these insults are great, but there are times when you need to deal with someone who is just hovering around your door like an annoying fly attracted to shit. You know the people: they’re too timid to step in and see you, but they know they have to at some point in time. For them, you need to lay down the law and ensure they never ever return to sully your doorframe. That’s when you break out the big one: the insult for which Malcolm Tucker is perhaps best known:
Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off.