Did 18-year-old comedy sketch featuring Rik Mayall predict Brexit?

Mayall gently advises the minister, who appears to be fretting about the political fallout from the failed coup, to “simply set up a Royal Commission” and make his character chair so he can “show the Cuban invasion failed because Europe let you down militarily.”

He adds: “Your new policy, which will make you wildly popular, is to leave the European Union, block up the Channel tunnel, and reinstate the old imperial measures.”

The minister, who is taken back by the recommendations, says he could not bare renouncing everything he holds dear “again” before deciding to shake on it. 

Mayall is then seen addressing a panel of shadowy underworld figures known as The Council where he says: “So, Britain will leave the European Union and will once more be a quaint and backward back-water which we’ll be able to manipulate effortlessly as our very own offshore island.”

A clip from a comedy show back in 2002 has resurfaced and it

Another clip from the early nineties shows Mayall addressing an EU conference as Tory money-grabbing MP Alan Beresford B’Stard in the show The New Statesman.

In it, Mayall’s speech about making Britain “independent” and free from “faceless” EU bureaucrats is likened to the rhetoric by ERG Brexiteer Jacob-Rees Mogg and Leave figurehead Nigel Farage.

Reacting to the Believe Nothing clip, @french_steve64 tweeted: “Scarily accurate. However that was satire and now it’s reality. What a long way the UK has come.”

Writer Iain Overton posted: “History repeats itself. First time as comedy. Then as tragedy. Cough.”

“Good god this makes my blood run cold. #BrexitReality #BrexitShambles #Brexit #RikMayall,” posted one user.

“Surprising to discover that in 2002 Rik Mayall was advising government on the benefits of Brexit,” quipped Tim Barnes.

Samuel Kennedy wrote: “I reckon Dominic Cummings has this playing on loop while he’s asleep.”