Sacha Baron-Cohen

I keep reading reviews of Brüno (often misspelt, ohne Umlaut, by reviewers). I may even watch it. The reviews annoy me, partly because of their lack of knowledge of Baron-Cohen's oeuvre.

Firstly, few seem to understand that Bruno was the first character Baron-Cohen portrayed on TV. This was my first exposure to him: as part of the miniscule audience of whatever satellite channel it was that Bruno's early appearances in comic confrontations with fashionistas occurred. Partly to blame is doubtless that Baron-Cohen's publicity machine is for whatever reason not keen to dredge up the memory of this, but, understandably now perhaps, wants to present this tired idea as fresh.

Personally, I've never thought that Baron-Cohen's confrontations with people were very funny. That kind of humour just makes me cringe. It was the other elements, the fictional ones, that are funny. With Ali G, it was the spiel that he gave around the interviews that was markedly funnier than the interviews themselves. As such, Baron-Cohen's finest production, at least that I've seen (and I haven't seen Borat, I confess it!, but I felt I'd seen enough of Baron-Cohen doing Borat to know I wouldn't like it), are his first, forgotten feature film, Ali G Indahouse, which is entirely scripted.