Whoops Apocalypse - Labour Government - ITV, 1982

The Labour Party gaining power is a rare occurrence - since 1945, it had only happened three times, until last week (as I write this), when the Kier Starmer-led Labour Party doubled their number of seats to win a majority of 172. This monumental result sparked a memory of my favourite scene from the 1982 sitcom Whoops Apocalypse, in which Labour swept to power led by Kevin Pork, played by Peter Jones. Pork's left-wing policies were more Jeremy Corbyn than Keir Starmer, and he doesn't waste time putting them into practice. He also has a surprising revelation for his Foreign Secretary (Geoffrey Palmer) and Home Secretary (Richard Davies). Whoops Apocalypse was written by the brilliant writing team Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, whose career I had followed as a teenager when The Burkiss Way become cult listening on Radio 4 ("Eric Pode of Croydon"). Responsible for many of the best Two Ronnies sketches of the time, they also wrote a disrespected sketch series called End Of Part One, which ITV chose to show in the middle of the afternoon, and later, the tabloid newspaper sitcom, Hot Metal, starring Richard Wilson. They then went their separate ways, with Marshall writing the hugely successful sitcom 2.4 Children, and Renwick the superlative One Foot In The Grave (starring, again, Richard Wilson) and, later, Jonathan Creek. Whoops Apocalypse ran for six episodes, and was also adapted into a less successful film in 1986. Please subscribe to my channel https://www.youtube.com/@billbobmatthews, which is home to many rarely seen comedy gems from the early to mid 1980s, when only early adopters had VCRs – as well as my own work as a writer and producer in TV and radio since that period. There are also riches from other decades too. The best way to navigate all the videos on the channel is via the Playlists... https://www.youtube.com/@billbobmatthews/playlists