A few years ago, Joe Lycett would have insisted he wasn’t a political comedian. Sure, the stand-up comic had caused havoc in Conservative HQ after reportedly tricking senior figures with a parody Sue Gray report he’d shared online. And, yes, he’d made a name for himself offering sarcastic messages of support to scandal-hit Tory ministers (one sample message to Suella Braverman after her Rwanda deal was blocked: “@suellabraverman ignore the haters babe (by haters I mean the royal court of justice)”.
But in interviews, Lycett denied it. Fast-forward two and a half years, and the 36-year-old is one of the country’s most prominent Tory teasers . I’m meeting Lycett, and have to know: does he really still think he’s not? “Nah, I basically am, aren’t I?” he scoffs, playfully.
“I didn’t start out with that in mind, and I’m not trained in that way...
But I can’t deny that I’m politically motivated these days.” Lycett chuckles. “But it was the previous government that did that.
Which was nice of them.” For all his loathing of the “really horrible, nasty group of people” that make up the Conservative Party, the Birmingham native can thank the Tories for much of his fame. For years, Lycett was a mid-tier name on the British stand-up scene and panel-show circuit, fighting corporate injustice on his consumer rights programme Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back .
But his political stunts were getting more traction. Things reached a head in 2022, when, duri.