Radio / Political Animals

Political Animals is a four-part series by Tony Bagley, broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in August/September 2012. Each episode is a fifteen-minute monologue from the perspective of a Downing Street cat: Wilberforce (1973-87), Humphrey (1989-97), Sybil (2007-08), and Larry (2011-present).

NB: Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office is a real-life official title, and all the cats in the series have really held the position. There has always been a mouser at 10 Downing Street (the British Prime Minister's office and home) since the 16th Century.

---

Political Animals contains examples of:

• Double Entendre:
  Humphrey: Some of you got your swords out once too often, of course. Including dear John, our esteemed Prime Minister.
• Foe Romance Subtext: Humphrey's probably joking when he talks about his forbidden love for Cherie Blair.
  Humphrey: Cherie, darling, I'm being horrid to you only because deep down... I'm crazy about you. Ours is a love that dare not speak its name.
• Hate at First Sight: Name-checked verbatim by Humphrey, describing his relationship with Cherie.
• The Ingenue: Sibyl, who is shocked by the pace of life in London and the loose morals of cats living there.
• Intellectual Animal: Not all the cats would be considered intelligent by human standards, but they are portrayed as bright enough for autobiographical monologues. Other animals, such as dogs, are just normal animals.
• Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
  Humphrey: Humphrey the Lothario uses transient sexual gratification as a balm to help him forget the deep well of loneliness inside him. What he's really looking for is love.
• Mean Boss: Gordon Brown, as overheard by Sibyl.
• Narrative Profanity Filter: See T-Word Euphemism.
• Nearly Normal Animal: All the cats are of the Largely Normal Animal subtype, having human thought processes that they can express to the audience but not to in-universe humans.
• T-Word Euphemism: Humphrey substitutes 'effing' into Alastair Campbell's Cluster F-Bomb rants.
  "Alastair calls the hack an effing c-word, ending in 'ing' and followed by the c-word without the 'ing,' and tells him he's banned from his next two effing c-word - with the 'ing' - press briefings."
• Unreliable Narrator: Sometimes the cats misunderstand human affairs, and sometimes they just couldn't care less.
• Vice City: London, according to Sybil.
• Windbag Politician: Tony Blair. Humphrey goes into some detail about his contempt for Tony's oratory.