Leave it to “Saturday Night Live” to find a tactless way to pay tribute to late British Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher.
The long-running comedy sketch show referenced the Iron Lady in a mockumentary skit called “The History of Punk: Ian Rubbish and the Bizarros” on Saturday night. In the skit, which was modeled after VH1’s “Behind the Music,” the fictional lead singer of the 1970s British band, Ian Rubbish, is painted as pro-Thatcher – an attribute that doesn’t sit very well with his bandmates or his audience.
“I suppose you could do a better job of running the country. She works every day of the week, including Saturday,” Rubbish yells at a fan during one of the band’s concerts.
It doesn’t take long for the audience, who largely opposed Thatcher’s leadership, to quickly fall out of love with the band, ultimately resulting in its downfall. After all, they had plenty of other punk rock bands to listen to that bashed the Iron Lady repeatedly.
“I remember saying to him once, ‘Ian, she’s just an awful person. What’s the appeal mate?’ ” one of Rubbish’s bandmates says in an interview for “The History of Punk.” (The answer, by the way was that Thatcher reminded Rubbish of his mum.)
While he may have revered Thatcher, he certainly wasn’t afraid to go after other societal figures, like the Queen or the fuzz. “The monarchy is a fallacy. You’re nothing but a C*#! in a Crown,” he sang about Queen Elizabeth II.
As one of his former bandmates pointed out in the mockumentary, “In all of punk music there was no one angrier than Ian Rubbish.”
You can watch the full skit here:
