Nish Kumar’s The Mash Report has been axed by the BBC after four series.
The corporation confirmed the show was ending in a statement saying that the “difficult” decision was made in order to “make room for new comedy shows”.
It added: “We would like to thank all those involved in four brilliant series and hope to work with Nish Kumar, [co-star] Rachel Parris and the team in the future.”
Kumar has since responded on Twitter to the news writing: “A lot of people are asking me for a comment and here it is” – accompanied with an image of himself on the show pointing to a screen that reads: “Boris Johnson is a liar and a racist.”
His response comes after Tim Davie, who became the BBC’s director general last year, had pledged in September to enforce a “radical shift” at the broadcaster to better represent the UK.
A lot of people are asking me for a comment and here it is: pic.twitter.com/C9ghSERUMy
— Nish Kumar (@MrNishKumar) March 12, 2021
He dismissed reports that he could axe comedy shows that were seen as too left-wing as “ridiculous”, but said he did want “to nurture brilliant writers from all kind of perspectives”.
Former BBC presenter Andrew Neil also previously condemned The Mash Report as “self-satisfied, self-adulatory, unchallenged left-wing propaganda”.
Speaking about the BBC’s potential shift previously, NME‘s resident comedian Alexandra Haddow said: “Shows such as The Mash Report, which Nish presents, and Frankie Boyle’s New World Order continuously mock the Government and the Tory farce we live in, and rightly so. They’re a mess. You couldn’t write it. To be honest, they’re actually a challenge to make fun of; they create their own satire.
“If we start saying you can’t rip the piss out of the bunch of Eton wombles running the country (and I use the word “running” very loosely here) it takes us down the fun route of a society where you can’t challenge authority – and don’t quote me on this, but I think that’s called a dictatorship.”
The comedy news show, which aired its first episode on BBC Two in 2017, covered a range of political topics, including Brexit.
It began as a spin-off of The Daily Mash website, and its last series went out in April and May 2020.
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