An apology to all those who would have been outraged by the Sketch if they’d ever read it
From the desk of Lord Kronsteen, founder and proprietor of the Critic Sketchcasting Corporation.
To all staff,
It is with a heavy heart that I take pen in hand to inform you of the resignation of both the Sketcher-General of the CSC, Robert Hutton, and also the corporation’s Chief Executive Officer of Sketch, Hobert Rutton. Please rest assured that during this turbulent time for the Corporation, our commitment to sketching is undimmed. Sketches will be overseen by our Head of Sketch Content, Bob Hutton, working closely with the Executive Sketch Editor, Rob O’Hutton.
As you will be aware, the Corporation’s output has been under intense scrutiny in recent days, following complaints about our Sketching of the wisest and handsomest man ever to lead a country, President Donald J Trump, peace be upon him.
We welcome that scrutiny, and the opportunity to correct errors. Which is why I commissioned an investigation of bias within the Corporation. I gave the job to my henchman Mr Oddjob, a man of impeccable credentials for independent thinking and a deep knowledge of the world of satire from his time writing Jim Davidson gags for Big Break.
I found the resulting Oddjob Memo deeply disturbing, so much so that I was compelled to immediately leak it to the Daily Telegraph. He found a systemic bias for describing the US president not as the modern Adonis he clearly is, but as a “giant orange toddler” and a “senile Tango-man”.
Worse than that, the Sketch repeatedly referred to the January 6 rioters attacking the Capitol building. To quote Oddjob: “Given what I took to be the anti-Trump nature of the Sketch, I of course assumed there would be a similar, balancing Sketch discussing the possibility that the Capitol building had attacked the rioters. I remain shocked that there was not.”
Since the publication of the Oddjob Memo, the Corporation has received over a thousand complaints from people who realise they would have been outraged by the Sketch if they’d ever read it. These are being dealt with in the normal way, by folding them into paper aeroplanes and throwing them out of the window at passing tourists.
There have been suggestions that the collapse in the quality of the Sketch has been the result of my failure to fund it properly, or that I put the Corporation under pressure to produce Sketches more in sympathy with my own political views.
Both these charges are without foundation. For the first, I had simply suggested that, as laughter is frequently identified as the best medicine, there was no need for staff health insurance. For the second, I will acknowledge that a few years ago I did buy a peerage from Boris Johnson, and that while this was going through, I became concerned that the Sketch was failing to emphasise many of the benefits of Conservative policy: for instance, many people dislike visiting the dentist, and under the last government, that worry simply went away.
However, it was never my intention that collapses in standards at an underfunded and demoralised Sketch would lead to inaccuracies about people I agreed with. Most importantly, nothing could have been further from my thoughts than the idea of offending the incarnation of the manly ideal that is President Trump, may he live for ever.
Corporation policies have now changed, and henceforth all mentions of the president will make it clear that he has a rich, lustrous, lion-like mane of golden hair, that his face glows in a healthy and totally convincing way, and that he stays awake in meetings. Flowers spring forth wherever he treads, and his touch can heal a number of diseases. His speeches are coherent, and he won elections not just in 2016, 2020 and 2024 but also in 1968, 1932 and 1860. To gaze upon him is to know that one is but a puny ant next to his magnificence.
As a peace offering, I have dispatched to the White House a bit of gold-effect plastic moulding that I stole from a Blackpool brothel a few years back. I’m pleased to see that it has already been superglued to the wall of the Oval Office.
I hope this will bring an end to the matter, and that the US Air Force drone currently tracking my yacht will be redeployed.
Yours,
Lord Kronsteen
Proprietor
c/o The Grovelling Suite
Trump Tower
(Dictated and signed in his absence)
