Count Binface

Wednesday

Jon Harvey

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is a triumph

Incredible stories, otherworldly creatures, false identities, a cavalcade of trickery: the original Odyssey is packed with everything you could want from a big-screen blockbuster. And like all great stories, it’s more than just a fantasy adventure. It’s about survival, marriage, truth, what it means to be a man and much more. It’s also roughly 2,700 years old, and by picking it for his latest movie, Sir Christopher Nolan has definitively proved that the old ones are the best. But why, really, has he decided to go Greek? Screenwriters have always been suckers for a good ‘coming home’ story. It was such a popular genre in ancient times that the Greeks even coined a name for it: ‘nostos’.

Martin Vander Weyer

Count Binface has shown Burnham how to make a manifesto

Count Binface’s manifesto, made for Makerfield and tweaked for Clacton, is a rare point of light in today’s Stygian political landscape. Could there be a more concise satirical takedown than ‘I will cut your taxes and raise everyone else’s’ or a sharper transport policy than ‘Wifi on trains that works; also trains that work’? This weekend offers a last chance for mischief-makers to suggest a matching agenda for Andy Burnham, before the real ragbag of inner-Labour compromise is unveiled over the coming weeks. Here’s my four-point contribution. First, don’t nationalise anything, not even Thames Water.

Thomas Munson

The problem with Farage’s blue suits

Count Binface has never lacked ambition. Nigel Farage’s only challenger in the Clacton by-election has, over the years, promised to cap the price of croissants at £1.10, nationalise Adele and build at least one affordable house. Admirable though these causes may be, however, the self-proclaimed ‘intergalactic space warrior’ has overlooked one national emergency. If he truly wants to leave Britain – or indeed Earth – in a better place than he found it, he should use this campaign to outlaw the royal blue suit from politics. The royal blue suit has spread through Westminster with the invasiveness of Japanese knotweed. Farage has embraced it with particular enthusiasm.