Political comedy The Thick of It might be satire, but Westminster-watchers have seen many of its fictional storylines come to life. What does this tell us about modern politics, asks Sean Gray, one of the show's writers.Week after week, policies and storylines from this series of The Thick Of It have emerged in real-life politics.
As a writer on the show, it has been a peculiar joy to watch as life imitates sweary art.
In the second episode of the series, Nicola Murray - our fictional leader of the opposition - decides to support a government policy of scrapping primary school breakfast clubs. Within hours of broadcast, a report was published in a Sunday broadsheet highlighting cuts facing real-life breakfast club initiatives.
In the following episode, our coalition characters, Fergus and Adam, launch a community bank - "the We Bank"- with £2bn-funding. The following Monday, Business Secretary Vince Cable announced a new £1bn "business bank".
Even while we were writing back in January, policies we'd put in the show were penny-crayoning themselves into reality.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19908366