“I like to get the Generation Game audience, all different ages and classes,” he says “I want to be fairly uncontroversial I’m not at the cutting edge. I’ve never been at the cutting edge and I don’t want to be, because then I’d date terribly quickly.”There is no sign of that happening. The ones that stay are weirdos.”Enfield’s political outings may be mildly provocative – in the past, two of his comic characters, Loadsamoney and Tory Boy, certainly created a stir – but his sketch show, Harry Enfield and Chums, is resolutely mainstream. He unashamedly admits to aiming for the Saturday night variety-show crowd. There is something very nerdy about wanting to be on committees and spout meaningless soundbites on College Green.”Politicians are dysfunctional. I know MPs who have given up because they had felt strongly about doing something, then realised that the House of Commons was the last place they were going to be able to do it They got bogged down in the bollocks and the backstabbing Any feeling of nobility disappeared.

The documentary closes with him grooving along to “Things Can Only Get Better” and joshing with Peter Mandelson at the victory party.Enfield reckons that although Ormal is an exaggeration, “he shows that a lot of these politicians are appallingly odd human beings. The reason they went into politics in the first place was more to do with their own warped personality than a desire to serve the nation. On the night of the 1997 general election, Ormal abandons the sinking Tory ship and scuttles over to New Labour. Any similarity to real-life politicians is, of course, entirely coincidental.During the course of the documentary, Ormal himself feeds his daughter dog food during a scare about its safety, sells arms to Saddam Hussein, institutes the Pool Tax, a swingeing levy on those without swimming pools, and masterminds a Tory poster campaign which depicts Tony Blair devouring a hamster above the slogan: “Labour Eats Household Pets”. The Normal Ormal film is enlivened by a rogues’ gallery of MPs (all played by Enfield): the lascivious womaniser Alan Swagg, the absurdly posh and out-of-touch Douglas Weird, the scatterbrained Dame Shirley Mess, the super-gossipy Julian Bitchily, the plain-speaking (ie rude) Yorkshireman, Sir Marcus Flatcapp, the wannabe racy Edwina Slagg, and the deadly dull Geoffrey Hush. Fortunately, even with such a popular government, there is still a place for satire.
“New Labour shouldn’t be allowed a free run,” Enfield contends “You’ve got to have a go at everyone – that’s our job.

Spitting Image was at its most powerful after the Tory landslide in 1983 because there was no other opposition. I can see Tony Blair being mortified – `For Christ’s sake, give us a chance’ – but that’s tough You’ve got to have a dig at them It makes us feel we’re getting our own back. Still, you’ve got put it in perspective; no satirist ever brought a government down – usually, they actually increase their majority. Even with Spitting Image, we were just going `nyer-nyer-nyer’ in the playground.”So what sort of impression of politicians will we gain from Enfield’s programmes? Not a favourable one, I fear. That happened with the emergence of camcorders and the Internet Everybody could be broadcasters as well as publishers. One of the organisations that has embraced this convergence of technologies is Undercurrents, which uses camcorders to catch any 1984-style abuses of power by the authorities and then places the footage on the Internet for all to see.

It’s a tribute to its effectiveness, though, that even in a jerky postage-stamp-sized incarnation it’s suitably chilling. The rest of the Universal site focuses on the studio’s other projects due for release, although they are all films coming up for release in the States. While it shouldn’t be beyond the studios to produce European versions of these sites, there’s always a pleasant frisson to be gained by getting an early peek at what’s on the way. Hopefully, as the Internet becomes more popular, it will encourage companies to coordinate their film releases.Big Brother www.undercurrents The really great changes in society sometimes come about when two technologies emerge at the right time to create something entirely new. mwalker independent.co.uk

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One of the most bizarre and eagerly awaited film events of the year must be Gus van Sant’s so-called “recreation” of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.