John Crace and Viv Groskop: A Farewell to Calm

Join 5x15 for an unmissable live event back at The Tabernacle in London's Notting Hill with the wildly entertaining John Crace, parliamentary sketch writer and political satirist par excellence, in conversation with the one and only Viv Groskop.

Throughout another year of bluster and bedlam in Westminster, John’s brilliantly acerbic political sketches have once more provided the nation with a much-needed injection of humour.

In A Farewell to Calm: The New Normal Survival Guide, Crace introduces an infectiously funny selection of his finest pieces from 2020–21, taking in everything from a summer of unfathomable U-turns to Christmas Covid confusion, and from lockdown-lifting to Brexit blithering.

Led by Boris’s poundshop Churchill tribute act, and featuring a cast of everyone’s least favourite pantomime villains, from Classic Dom Cummings to Door Matt Hancock, the end result is a brilliantly entertaining chronicle of another tumultuous year on these benighted islands.

John Crace is the Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer, author of the Digested Read columns and a contributor to GQ. He is also the author of many books including Decline and Fail and I, Maybot. He is an ardent supporter of Tottenham Hotspur FC and has written several books about the club including Vertigo: One Football Fan's Fear of Success and Harry's Games: Inside the Mind of Harry Redknapp.

Viv Groskop is a writer, critic, broadcaster and stand-up comedian. She is the author of How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking, also a Top 10 iTunes podcast, now in its 15th series, featuring guests like Hillary Clinton, Margaret Atwood, Nigella Lawson and Julie Andrews. Her latest book is Lift As You Climb: Women, Ambition and How to Change the Story. She has presented Front Row and Saturday Review on BBC Radio 4 and is a regular on BBC1’s This Week.

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