The political genius of Ben Elton

Does anyone remember the band ‘Vanilla’? They were a girl group from North London who released the single ‘No Way No Way’ in 1997 – reaching number 14 in the charts.
 
Still no? Let me jog your memory with some of the lyrics:
‘No way, no way
Ma na ma na,
Don’t get fresh with me’
 
STILL no? Oh well – they did only have two singles, after all.
 
The song was released when I was 13 years old, and I remember thinking ‘Surely this is some kind of sick joke – unleashing such revolting dreck on us teenagers and expecting us to lap it up’. It promptly won the dubious title of "Worst Music Video Ever" on the 1997 ITV Chart Show end-of-year special.
 
Years later, I was bickering with a guy about his jukebox choices in a London pub and the subject of Vanilla came up. He told me that he’d actually been the sound engineer for the song, and claimed that the whole thing was a bet between two established music producers for who could produce the worst pop video.
 
I was right! My 13-year-old brain had cracked its very own enigma code. Quite what became of the other single, I will never know, but it demonstrated that critics don’t always appreciate an artist’s intentions.
 
So when I saw Ben Elton’s latest comedy offering, The Wright Way being torn apart by critics – my ears pricked. If popular opinion is to be believed, Elton is a sell out who hasn’t written anything funny since Margaret Thatcher resigned. Is this new sit-com another nail in his reputational coffin?
 
Because The Wright Way is pretty much unwatchable, and it’s not just the writing. The acting, direction and even title sequence are enough to make you throw your shoe at the television.
 
The fact that the sitcom is set in the world of Health and Safety legislation – that punchbag of the Right – only adds to the public perception of Ben Elton as a political flip-flopper who has lost touch with his original audience.
 
But if you take a step back, maybe Elton knows exactly what he’s doing. Maybe once you’ve played a central role in getting Blackadder and The Young Ones in the national conscience, you can really appreciate the irony of such critical derision.
 
I refuse to believe that Ben Elton doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing with The Wright Way. I think he’s so accustomed to negative comparisons with his early work that he has decided to have a laugh at the expense of the critics, and treat their work with the same contempt that they treat his.
 
Maybe that’s where the fire of his early work has gone. It’s gone into rejecting the critical perception that made him.  I don’t think he’s lost the plot completely. No way.