Jonathan Pie: The Great NHS sell off.
“Come all ye bastards!” The NHS is for sale.
Jonathan Pie is a fictitious British news reporter, created and played by British actor and comedian Tom Walker.[2] Pie appears in a series of video clips where he rants about the state of politics in the United Kingdom,[3][4][5] presented as if he is a real reporter speaking his personal opinions to camera before or after filming a regular news segment.
The first spoof news report featuring Pie, released just after the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, was responding to mainstream media reports that gave particular weight to Corbyn’s past relationship with Diane Abbott.[6] Walker was soon approached by several media companies, including RT UK, the Russian government-funded television network, which offered him complete creative control. He worked with RT for several months, before leaving in July 2016, just prior to his appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.[7]
The character received international coverage after the 2016 US election, when his report on Donald Trump‘s victory went viral,[8] becoming a YouTube trending video. Some media outlets, including PJ Media, did not recognise Jonathan Pie as a fictitious character, presenting him instead as a real-life, professional “British lefty reporter”.[9]
The National Health Service (NHS) is the public health services of England, Scotland and Wales, and is commonly used to refer to those of Northern Ireland. They were established together by the Labour Party as one of the major social reforms following the Second World War. The founding principles were being comprehensive, universal and free at the point of delivery.[1] Today, each provides a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free for people ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom.[2] Charges are made for prescriptions (in England), dental treatment and optical care, but there is a range of exemptions from these charges.
