A pinprick of blood in high places; Laura Davis meets the writer who put Tony Blair on trial for war crimes.

Byline: Laura Davis

'I SPEND quite a lot of time with lawyers," admits the modern-day Jonathan Swift, with the knack for both teasing and terrifying politicians.

And it is easy to imagine Alistair Beaton arguing shades of grey with the legal department of whichever TV station he happens to be writing for at the time.

But the Glaswegian satirist, whose impressive CV includes Spitting Image, Not the Nine O'Clock News and, more recently, the Trial of Tony Blair, insists he is not solely in the business of drawing political blood.

"I don't really believe in beating people over the head and preaching at them. I like the idea of serious comedy, comedy that says something and provokes things and makes people argue," says Beaton, whose latest play King of Hearts is appearing at the Playhouse this week.

"I want to make a point and I want to entertain - both at the same time."

Beaton, who graduated from Edinburgh University with first class honours in Russian and German, made his break into television thanks to an already successful radio career.

When Not the Nine O'Clock News producer John Lloyd was asked to move to TV, he took Beaton and a number of other writers along with him.

Broadcast on the BBC from 1979-1982, the series launched the careers of many successful comics including Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones. It is credited with bringing alternative comedy to the mainstream and its quickfire sketch format was copied by many of its successors.

However, the first episode was panned by critics who did not foresee the cult hit the show was to become.

"People look back on it as an immediate success, but it wasn't a big hit immediately. During the first series we had a whole wall of bad press notices up, including things like 'this is schoolboy humour'," reveals Beaton, 59.

"That actually applies to a lot of stuff on television - people look back and say that was an immediate hit but sometimes it takes another series before you get there."

Though both Not the Nine O'Clock News and Spitting Image have long been relegated to the annals of TV history, political satire has taken a new form. In recent years there has been a rise in semi-fictional dramas based on the lives of real politicians.

"Satire and sitcoms come in and out of fashion and there is always a place for both of them," argues Beaton.

"At the moment, satire is very lively and very vibrant and shows like the Thick Of It are really terrific.

"At the moment our two big parties are in agreement about most things. Blair's just got the Trident vote through by virtue of having an opposition who agree with him.

"I think we're in an era of consensual politics - people are so hungry for real issues to be discussed that they look elsewhere than Parliament.

That's why satire has a very big role to play at the moment." Beaton's own contribution to the debate includes A Very Social Secretary, about David Blunkett's affair with Kimberley Quinn that, in the writer's own words, "became a metaphor for Tony Blair's decadent regime", and The Trial of Tony Blair.

This latest comedy-drama, aired on Channel 4 earlier this year, follows the Prime Minister a few years in the future in the months before he is tried for war crimes in The Hague.

Although he is portrayed as a pathetic character - considering converting to Catholicismto be absolved of his sins, lying helpless in an NHS hospital and learning that Cherie Blair's law firmwould be prosecuting his case - Beaton's version of Blair seems almost affectionately rendered.

"I think that was partly because Robert Lindsay portrayed him so wonderfully," reveals Beaton, who has worked as a speech-writer for Gordon Brown. "But also I think somewhere you have to have a lingering affection for the person you are satirising.

"There are some people that are hard to satirise because they are so useless. People think that the more pathetic somebody is the easier it is to satirise them but actually it's the other way around. You have to have a target that's worth firing at.

"It's quite hard to satirise David Cameron because he's such an all-purpose politician at the moment," he adds.

"If somebody said to me 'would you like to write a 90-minute film about him?' I would say 'how about a nine-minute film?'."

The King of Hearts, however, is not directly based on real people, although some of the characters (particularly a certain red-haired prince) may seem a little familiar.

The king has been in a coma for months and the heir to the throne is planning to marry a Muslim woman. The play centres on the political machinations of the Prime Minister and his cronies as they attempt to prevent the wedding from going ahead.

"Royalty provides the storyline but I'mmore interested in the political reaction to the crisis.

"All our politicians now go around saying 'we believe in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic Britain'.

"Although there are a few jokes at the monarchy's expense along the way, what really interests me is whether all those politicians who are making big statements about multi-cultural Britain really believe it," explains Beaton.

"It's complex because if you're a liberal white Briton you want to believe in a multi-cultural society and yet some aspects of Islamare very threatening to the idea of free speech.

"At the same time, you could also say there's a Labour government that's trying to use the threat of terrorismto encroach upon our civil liberties and actually ghettoise Islam. A lot of people are not very sure of what they think."

But although Beaton is targeting the politicians more than the monarchy, he admits he would be delighted if the Queen was to react to the farce.

"I don't imagine that BuckinghamPalace is absolutely thrilled by the play . . . I'd love it if they commented, but there we are.

"When you write satire, you always wonder if you're going to change anything. Most of the time you don't know but one of the interesting moments was the Blunkett film because, apart from the fact that his lawyers sent many letters trying to stop it, the diaries of Blunkett when they were published revealed that he was absolutely infuriated by it.

"Occasionally, the entertainment that one writes at least draws a pinprick of blood in high places."

One of the drawbacks of writing political dramas is that they are very much of their time. Will King of Hearts and the Trial of Tony Blair mean as much to people in a decade as they do today?

Beaton claims this question is not one he worries about answering.

"If I can say something to people now, I'm very happy with that; I don't have pretensions to speaking to people far into the future," he says. "I do know that the phenomena we're dealing with are more widespread than just in Britain. Feelgood, the play I wrote about five years ago about spin, which I thought was all about British politics, has since played in about 10 countries.

"So if I can speak to people now I'm satisfied with that."

KING of Hearts, by Alistair Beaton, is appearing at the Playhouse tonight until Thursday, and again on Saturday.

I want to make a point and I want to entertain

A mixture of satire and fantasy

THE unprecedented public opposition to the War on Iraq is something that Tony Blair could not have foreseen when he made the decision to invade.

But it is even more unlikely that he would expect to be tried for War Crimes in the Hague.

Satirist Alistair Beaton believes that, while his TV drama The War on Iraq was a work of fiction, it is one many people would like to see realised.

"The Trial of Tony Blair was a strange mixture of satire and fantasy," he explains.

"I should think millions of people in Britain fantasise about Blair being put on trial for taking us to war with Iraq and for being a war criminal. I'm sure I'm not alone in that."

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CAPTION(S):

Alistair Beaton, writer of the play, King of Hearts, which is coming to Liverpool; Ben Righton (Prince Richard), Zahra Ahmadi (Nasreen) and Christian Brassington (Prince Arthur) in King of Hearts; Robert Lindsay in The Trial of Tony Blair; Alister Cameron as Sir Terence Pitch in King of Hearts; The Spitting Image model of Margaret Thatcher; Bernard Hill as David Blunkett, in Channel 4's A Very Social Secretary