‘The BBC has a diversity of everything except opinion’: meet Dominic Frisby, Nigel Farage’s favourite comic

The comedian Dominic Frisby supports Brexit, thinks the world of Nigel Farage, mocks the concept of hate speech, critiques Left-liberal group-think, disdains big government, and thinks we’re out of our depth with debt. And he articulates all this through the medium of satirical song.

You may well not have heard of him and that’s one reason why he helps define the state of British comedy. Though that checklist of preoccupations might make the 51-year-old sound like a rabid Right-winger to some, Frisby’s modus operandi is gentle: catchy music, droll lyrics, a push-back not a fightback. He’s inspired by Noel Coward, PG Wodehouse and Gilbert and Sullivan, and exudes the warmth of a Victorian knees-up. He’s arguably more attuned to the popular mood than a dozen ubiquitous comedy “faces” and yet his main platform is YouTube. The powers that be aren’t rushing to give him airtime.

Wasn’t Tim Davie, the new director-general of the BBC, supposed to be “tackling” the Left-wing bias in comedy? “I can confirm that the phone hasn’t rung once,” Frisby says, flashing the first of many grins that explain why he’s able to disseminate contentious material without looking like he’s got an axe to grind.

His indictment of the Corporation sounds more measured than plaintive. It’s still damning. “The BBC remains by far and away the best platform there is in the UK for a performer. But where it stands in the culture war is pretty clear and that’s not changing: Remain-voting, technocratic, Left-of centre worldview, diversity of everything except opinion. If the BBC commissioned something that wasn’t from the usual suspects and gave people from outside the club a chance, they could have a huge hit on their hands.

“There’s a large majority in England of people who believe in small government, individual responsibility, low taxes, traditional Conservative values – but they’re ignored. Why is there no comedy on our mainstream channels representing that view? People in BBC comedy think that because we have a Tory government, they’re punching up. They don’t realise that they’re punching down because their culture is almost totally controlled by the Left – it’s subsidised, which makes it beholden to its paymasters.”

Frisby (the son of the late playwright Terence Frisby, best-known for the 1960s comedy There’s a Girl in My Soup) is this week releasing a new album, his second, titled Anthems for the Excommunicated. If the title doesn’t explain everything, three new tracks indicate what he’s on about: I Am a White Man and I’m Sorry; I’m Gonna Marry Gary; and Arise, Sir Nigel.

Whether it’s an exaggerated mea culpa for being “responsible” for all the world’s ills, declaring oblivious devotion to a bloke in a dress, or celebrating the much-vilified Farage’s knighthood, he induces smiles and intakes of breath in equal measure. There’s a pulse of defiance (and despair) beneath the mischief: he’s out of sorts with the times – “I’m like [a] libertarian Billy Bragg,” he says, “but with jokes.”

“Excommunication is rampant at the moment. Hence the title of the album,” he says. “Cancel culture is just modern excommunication. When we studied medieval history at school, I used to think, ‘What’s the problem with being excommunicated, surely you just got on with it?’ – but then you see it in the real world, how your life can be ruined, your income gone, no one wants to talk to you or be seen talking to you.

“Even the guy I write the music with, who goes by the name Noah Fleetwood, won’t put his real name on it. He doesn’t want to be cancelled. But I get so many nice messages from people going, ‘Thanks so much for your song, it articulated what we were feeling but felt we couldn’t say’ – so it’s working.”

The “woke movement”, he continues, “is a form of authoritarianism. Zero Mostel said one of the functions of comedy is to undermine pomposity – it’s a way of attacking authority. I’m trying to do that through my songs.”

Does he have sympathy for the semi-pariah actor Laurence Fox, then? “I think he’s great. He gets smeared and straw-manned left, right and centre, but he is dealing with arguments that few have the cojones to take up but that badly need [making].”

The album notably contains a 2020 update of 17 Million F--- Offs, a mock folk song released last year that scampishly revelled in the way that powerful pro-EU institutions, politicians and celebrities had been told where to stick it at the 2016 referendum. You might describe it as “a breakthrough in name only”: it has had millions of views online, and was performed to Union Flag-draped crowds outside Westminster at the hour of exiting the EU on January 31. It was pretty much adopted as the Leave anthem. Yet despite scraping into the official charts, and even reaching number one on Amazon, it has had next-to-no airplay.

It takes guts to pen and perform a song like that at a time as divided as this. “Remainers who weren’t blinded by their hatred of Brexit could see that the song was funny and true,” Frisby maintains – “true about the misinformation, Project Fear, the second referendum campaign. So I felt like I had the upper hand.” Still, he experienced a lot of viciousness online.

The spite spiked when he was selected as a Brexit Party candidate for the 2019 general election. “I got a lot of nastiness online and people scrawled some horrible stuff on my Edinburgh Fringe posters. I lost a lot of work as well.” But he isn’t backing down from his unfashionable positions. Though it’s obviously in jest, genuine admiration informs Secretly in Love with Nigel Farage, a teasingly silly ditty recorded in the style of Barry White, evoking a family-man whose furtive late-night pleasure comes from ogling clips of his hero speechifying in the EU.

“I think he’s a brilliant politician. He has clear principles, unlike many in Westminster, and fights passionately for them.” The admiration is mutual – they’re now mates and Farage invited him to “a boozy lunch” last month (recorded and streamed as part of the latter’s Step Up series), in which they discussed, among other things, Frisby’s latest book Daylight Robbery: How Tax Shaped Our Past and Will Change Our Future.

Underpinning his libertarian satire is his fairly remunerative and self-taught expertise in matters financial; he writes a column for MoneyWeek, presents the TV series Money Pit (with Jason Manford), and has penned books on heavyweight subjects (albeit with a light touch): Life After the State and Bitcoin: the Future of Money? There’s clearly far more to this eccentric, bearded figure – usually seen in a top hat, carrying a ukulele – than meets the eye.

Frisby’s live gigging experience (post-drama school) dates back to the 1990s, but his first viral hit came in 2012. “Take the prudent savers and just give them a squeeze, that’s the economics of Keynes,” he purred in Debt Bomb – a parody of Tom Jones’s Sex Bomb. It’s even more apt in 2020. He worries about our borrowed billions: “Fiat money is being debased like there’s no tomorrow. It’s a very dangerous situation.”

The song that maybe feels most bang on the money, though, is I’m Gonna Marry Gary. “It started as a joke. I said I’d fallen in love. My friend said, “What’s her name?” and I said, “Gary”. The song wrote itself after that – there was no real agenda. It was funny to have this bloke obsessing over a woman and his mates going “She’s got balls.” I got a 6’ 7” guy to play Gary on the video.

“There wasn’t an underlying pro- or anti-trans sentiment, it was just the comedy of someone not being able to see what’s right in front of them. It’s a pretty harmless, stupid song – but a couple of the people involved begged me not to put it up, because they were scared of the repercussions – that they’d lose work.” There’s no escaping the threat of excommunication.

He pressed on with it, anyway. And he would now like to submit it for the UK’s 2021 Eurovision Entry, if possible. “It’s a happy, catchy, feel-good song for all the family, that represents Britain today,” he deadpans, with a twinkle.

Anthems for the Excommunicated is available now. Info: dominicfrisby.com