When we're ruled by clowns, where's the satire?

WATCHING TV is bad for your blood pressure.

- with GARRY BUSHELL

Irritations abound - mumbling actors, deafening soundtracks, dramas shot in the dark, dramas featuring text messages so tiny only an eagle-eyed child with a magnifying glass could read them...

And why, when we're ruled by clowns, is there no proper TV satire? Especially when Real Time With Bill Maher proves political scorn can still sting.

Caustic comedian Maher hails from the old-school counter-culture Left, but that doesn't stop him from taking pot shots at all manner of fashionable American foolishness.

Bill is fearlessly un-PC and, unlike say Ian Hislop, when he raises an issue he also supplies a punchline or two.

Marching for Hamas is "like rooting for the planes on 9/11", he said.

Then targeting rent-a-mob students: "If ignorance was a disease, Harvard Yard would be the Wuhan wet market."

Screened by Sky Atlantic, the HBO show can sail close to the wind. Maher recently joked, "Trump has a unique bond with the Saudis, they both reshaped the Manhattan skyline". Ouch.

But how refreshing to see someone on TV standing up to the privileged "cry-bullies" of the self-righteous ultra-Left.

Could we do late night comedy here? Sky thinks so.