Jonathan Pie is a man with a lot to get off his chest – and that’s exactly what he did when he called in at the New Theatre for his live show Back to the Studio.

The opinionated newsman is the alter-ego of comedian Tom Walker – but, like David Brent and Alan Partridge, it’s easy to forget he is actually a comic creation.

A cult figure, Pie made his name on YouTube, where his concise rants have become required viewing among those of a left-leaning persuasion.

The fact he has acquired this level of fame without a presence on television says much about the waning influence of mainstream broadcast media. Ironically, it is his acutely well-observed portrayal of a TV news presenter that has established Walker as a comedic genius. He satirises not only politics but television itself. And it’s all so believable.

Pie starts by explaining the format for his new show – “Sunday Politics meets Victoria Derbyshire” – while communicating through his earpiece with unseen producer, Tim.

Pie is unimpressed with the cheap set and cheesy graphics and doesn’t hold back, with much creative profanity and a few quips designed to provoke offence – of which some is taken.

A revolving ‘wheel of fortune’ features the logos of each of the mainstream political parties, and he gives it a spin. It lands, of course, on the Conservatives – eliciting a long no-holds-barred rant about everything wrong with it.

But Pie is not just here to preach to the converted. He has other fish to fry, and that means taking on the hot potato of Brexit and his own side.

In a brilliantly poised segment designed to alienate everyone, he slags off strong advocates of both sides of the EU referendum - calling us idiots for backing either side (on the one hand for unnecessarily destroying the economy and on the other for supporting membership of an undemocratic right wing trading block).

In a highlight of the show, which should be made part of the National Curriculum, he dissects the smug hypocrisy of the left, and its refusal to blame itself for its failure to take power, here and across the pond.

He goes on, hilariously, to intelligently destroy the simplistically infantile buzz words and mantras lazily banded about in the name of political correctness: ‘cultural appropriation’ (with special reference to that week's story of Little Mix singer Jesy Nelson, who reaped a social media backlash for having the nerve to dare dressing her hair in dreadlocks), ‘mansplaining’, the idea of ‘woke’ ("what used to be known as 'right-on’"), and, finally – in an incendiary encore – the whole myth of ‘white male privilege’ as an unqualified put-down for a vast slice of the population – including all those working class men living in poverty.

It’s cutting and brilliant, and only the narrow-minded could take offence.

What a shame Pie is a fictional character; he’d make a great politician.

5/5