Vintage Politics

Dom Joly: Politics, pranks and a love for Lebanese wine.

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Episode notes

This week’s guest is better known for his satirical sketches and Trigger Happy TV than his love of politics. That insight would be wrong! Dom Joly is a lover of both wine and politics, which makes him the perfect guest on the show.

From his self-confessed love of champagne and Lebanese wines to stories that feel almost too surreal to be true — including accidentally breaking David Mellor’s glasses with a football, chasing Peter Mandelson around and his own time working as a diplomat in Prague — Joly has had a front-row seat to the strange theatre of political life.

In this episode, we dive into “Vintage Politics” through his eyes: the larger-than-life personalities, the bizarre moments that history tends to smooth over, and the enduring sense that politics has always been, at least in part, a kind of performance.